Danny Phantom: Reconstructed
by Fulcon
Summary: No one is safe. The world is a very dangerous place. Parents are not stupid and just because you believe ghost's don't exist doesn't mean they won't kill you when you tick them off. When a science experiment works against all odds, can Danny survive long enough to learn these crucial lessons or will the horrors eat him alive?
1. Origin: Part 1

_The following is a fan-based work of fiction. Danny Phantom is the Intellectual Property of Viacom, Nickelodeon and Butch Hartman. Please support the official release._

* * *

><p>The atmosphere in the lab was electric. Jack and Maddie Fenton were practically beside themselves with anticipation as they giddily checked one system after another, bouncing from panel to panel with large smiles on their faces. Even Danny, who usually just wished for his parents to be normal was excited, sitting on a stool in the observation area above the partition where his parents were working. The only sour mood was Jasmine, Danny's older sister, who sat on her stool with a worried frown on her face.<p>

The two areas, the observation level and the testing partition were separated by three feet of stairs, a wall which was sectioned off by three large windows and an air-tight security door which could only be unlocked by both of their parents security badges.

Danny looked at his sister. "Jazz, you can't seriously still be thinking that our parents are wasting their time."

"I'm more worried about what will happen when they realize it," Jazz replied as her frown deepened. "Having your most deeply held beliefs shaken when cold hard reality hits you in the face can lead to serious depression and I don't think we'll be able to survive a depressed Dad."

Danny sighed and went back to watching his parents through the windows. "I know I'm not a nuclear physicist like Dad is or a biochemist like Mom, but I think that the portal will work."

The portal in question was right now a hole in the wall, a steel frame with steel doors buckled together with industrial strength steel clamps, the inside being wired with multiple projectors, powered by synthetic ectoplasm developed by the Fentons and a nuclear reactor.

Jazz quirked an eyebrow. "I may only be a humble psychology student, but I'm sure that if ghosts exist, someone would've found definitive proof by now."

Danny shrugged. "I'd personally prefer to think of my parents as sane, or the fact that we have a nuclear reactor in our basement would make me go crazy."

Jazz stretched and yawned. "True enough," she said, opening the backpack at the foot of the stool and withdrawing her Fenton-pad. "I'll just be working on psych-paper here until Mom and Dad are done."

"No need for that, Jazzy-pants!" Jack's voice came off of the intercom, his deep voice somehow carrying a childlike level of energy. Down in the testing partition, Jack was holding his jumpsuits pager to his mouth. "We've just finished checking the wiring, the reactors cooling rods are working perfectly so we're ready for the first portal test."

Jasmine flinched at her nick-name, but reached for the observation decks pager. "Got it, Dad."

The two scientists marched up the stairs to the door and unsealed it with a turn of a hatch like you'd find on a submarine. They walked inside, Jack jumping into his extremely comfortable leather-chair, his day-glow orange jumpsuit clashing horribly with the dark burgundy of the leather. His hands, clad in black gloves, began working quickly to set up the power to the portal.

Maddie, her teal jumpsuit with her hood pulled over, walked sat in her station in the observation deck, checking synthetic ectoplasm levels and preparing the projectors as the door automatically closed and sealed itself behind her.

Jazz put her Fenton-pad away.

Danny was smiling. "Now for the moment of truth."

"Power systems nominal, all systems green," Jack reported, standing up and walking over to the large red button and inserting a silver key into one of the key holes directly below it.

"Ecto-projectors active and ready. Safety glass is in place," Maddie replied, standing up and inserting her key by the large red button.

Jazz's frown got sharper. The Safety Glass was six inches of glass which was treated with an anti-ghost solution over the inside of the portal. Said solution was hundreds of blood blossoms ground up, mixed with water and pre-sprayed over the glass with the portals internal applicators.

It was Jack's idea. Apparently one of his ancestors used it.

The keys were turned in sync and the clamped portal doors opened. The transparent covering of the button opened and with their hands joined together, Jack and Maddie pressed the button with large smiles and tears beginning to well up.

Nothing happened.

The room was deathly silent as the glorious burst of green that heralded Jack and Maddie's assured sanity did not come. They pressed the button again.

Nothing.

"Come on, work!" Jack snapped, slamming on the button with a closed fist.

Nope.

The parents Fenton sighed, and went back to check their data again.

Jasmine sighed. "Mom, Dad. You've been at this since five in the morning, it's four in the afternoon. Why don't you take a break for the day and come back tomorrow?"

"No can do, Jazzy-pants!" Jack answered, looking at his assorted computer monitors. "According to the data, I've got, there wasn't even a power drain on the reactor."

"And here, the ectoplasm projectors didn't activate," Maddie replied. "Might be a circuit failure somewhere, somehow." Maddie pulled her hood and goggles back ,revealing short dark red hair and blue eyes. "Maybe Jazz is right, dear. We have been at this for almost half a day."

"I _am_ right!" Jazz insisted.

"Circuit failure," Jack repeated again, checking his screens. "According to this, all systems are go. Maybe we're just missing something?"

"Because we're tired?" Maddie smiled.

Jack was silent, his massive, muscle bound frame still as he looked over everything. Eventually, he reclined back, his chair squealing in protest."Yeah, I can see your point, Madds. We'll go over everything again tomorrow."

"Maybe you guys should go out?," Danny suggested with a hopeful smile.

"Will you two be okay here by yourselves?" Jack asked, standing and stretching some more.

"I got a paper to write," Jazz answered. "I'll be in my room all day with a mug of coffee."

"Make sure you eat something, sweetie," Maddie told her. "And Danny?"

"Err...I was kind of hoping to invite Sam and Tucker over," Danny replied, rubbing the back of his head.

"Alright, that's good enough for me," Jack answered, bounding to a standing position. "As usual, fridge is open to everyone for whatever reason but stay out of the lab."

"Got it," Danny and Jazz said at the same time.

"Now, upstairs everyone!" Jack boomed and everyone marched single-file upstairs. Danny immediately pulled his phone out of his pocket and speed-dialed Tucker's phone while Maddie and Jack reminded Jasmine her duties as the baby sitter, which pretty much boiled down too 'keep an ear on things and call us if something goes horribly wrong'.

The phone only rang twice before Tucker excitedly asked; "Dude, how'd it go?"

"Circuit failure, apparently," Danny replied. "Didn't even turn on."

"Seriously? That's lame!" Came Sam's voice.

Danny blinked in surprise. "Sam, you're at Tucker's house?"

"What? No!" Was her reply.

"Three-way," Tucker helpfully informed.

"Oh. Got it," Danny's face dawned in comprehension. "Anyway, Mom and Dad are heading out and said you can come over."

"Sweet," Sam replied.

"Be right over," Tucker also replied.

Soon, after Jack and Maddie has left for some Chinese restaurant in downtown Amity Park, the doorbell rang. Repeatedly. A lot of times. Danny yanked the door open and stared at the first of his two best friends. "Tucker! Knock it off!"

Tucker Foley smiled and adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses. He was African American, with short curly black hair covered by a beret. "Sorry, I was excited."

Sam smirked. "Yeah, excited. About what?" She, on the other hand had alabaster skin and black hair, much like Danny. Only her's was bobbed and had a top knot, and her eyes were a light violet.

"We get to finally see the lab!" Tucker said, waving his arms like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Actually no," Danny said. "The 'don't go into the lab' rule is still in effect."

"Aw, come on!" Tucker whined as Danny invited them in. "There's a real nuclear reactor down there! Small enough to fit in a basement! That's supposed to be impossible!"

"So's a portal to the afterlife, but that hasn't stopped my parents from trying," Danny replied.

"And that's really cool," Sam smiled widely. As the group walked into the living room, she took the right side of the couch. "Seriously, I don't know what's cooler about your parents, Danny. That they can build and maintain a nuclear reactor in their basement, or that they're using it to power a portal to the '_Ghost Zone_'?"

"You're a lot more into it than I am, Sam," Danny replied, turning on the television situated in front of the assorted couches and sitting on the opposite side of Sam.

"How could she not be into it? Heck, how can I not be into it?" Tucker had, of course, taken the recliner. "Nuclear! Reactor! With a friggan Warp Gate in your basement!"

"_Potential_ warp-gate," Danny corrected, grabbing the remote. "Anyone care what we watch?"

"I think _April 1st_ is on in a few," Sam's eyes got wide in anticipation of her favorite slasher movie. "Channel 223."

"_Pirates 6_ is on now, channel 234," Tucker countered, leaning forward "That's the one with the Ninja's."

Danny thought for a moment before remembering something. "_Glory's Reign_ is on in two."

The three looked at each other, eyes darting from one another as they came to the unspoken agreement of what they were to do over the remote. Tucker and Sam leapt after it. Well, Sam did, tackling Danny to the couch as she reached for the remote. Tucker only pretended to do so, then sat back down and waited.

Danny was holding the remote as far away from Sam as he could, right into Tucker's reach, as he cheerfully plucked the remote from Danny's fingers. "Alright, love birds, knock it off."

It was then, as Tucker switched the channel, that Danny and Sam realized that they were on top of each other. Danny turned red, Sam turned red and angry. "You are so _dead_, Tucker!" She stated as she got ready to tackle the tech-geek next.

"No fighting over remote!" Came the sharp voice of Jazz from upstairs. "Tucker, pick something! And don't call them love birds, you've only known her for two months!"

"Three!" Danny corrected as Sam climbed off of him. "Three months!"

"Whatever! I have a paper to write, so keep it down!"

"Okay, fine!" Danny and Sam were now calmed down, though they were still red in the face.

As the slightly-insane Pirate Captain did swashbuckling battle and exchanged witticisms with the dark-clad and serious natured ninja's on the screen, Danny and Sam were quick to purposely forget what happened a few minutes ago, while Tucker stashed it away in his mind in the same folder he kept his most cherished memories, _folder 9, subsection c: perverted_, to be specific.

The movie went on, and finished and the silence from everyone was making Tucker grin just slightly more with each passing second. When the credits finished and the commercial for the Nasty Burger came on, Sam broke the ice.

"So, Danny," Sam began.

"Yeah?"

"The portal didn't work."

"Nope," Danny replied, turning to face her with a raised eyebrow. "What about it?"

"Well, I was kind of thinking," Sam said. "What if we fixed the portal for your parents?"

Danny was silent for a long moment. "Yeah? Fix it how?"

"I don't know," Sam replied, crossing her arms. "I just thought that since Tucker's pretty good with technology and you know your parents lab _very_ well, we could sneak in there and get the portal working for your parents before they get back."

"We could probably do that, yeah," Tucker agreed, nodding with a thoughtful frown on his face. "But it's his parents house with his parents rules. They said no one goes in the lab, so we'd better honor that."

Danny looked between his two friends and sighed. "Sam, are you suggesting that because you want to help my parents, or because you _really_ want to see the lab?"

"Yes," Sam answered. "They said we could see the lab if the portal works, so us going in there and turning the portal on isn't breaking any rules."

"But that's not the case anymore," Danny answered.

"They didn't say we couldn't see the lab when the portal starts working, they just said don't go in there," Sam said.

Danny raised both eyebrows in confusion and tried to force words out of his mouth, but only a strangulated sound came out.

"I'm confused," Tucker offered.

"What I mean is, they never said that we couldn't go in there if the portal is working," Sam explained with an exasperated look on her face.. "It's a loophole. Because the portal isn't working, we can't go in there. If we get the portal to work, we can be in there because Danny's parents said we could be."

"Oh gotcha," Tucker nodded.

"But that's not what they _meant_, though!" Danny's voice raised in volume.

"Shhh, keep it down!" Sam whispered, motioning for Danny to lower the volume. "Your sister is right above us! She could hear!"

Speak of the devil, and the psychologist will appear. "What are you guys talking about?" Jazz said, walking down the stairs. "You guys aren't planning on going down into the lab are you?"

"Sam want's to go down there to try and get the portal working," Tucker answered nonchalantly

"Tucker!" Sam hissed.

Jasmine folded her arms. "Why? It's not going to work. Ghosts don't exist. You'd be going down there just to see a hole in the wall with sprinklers mounted on the inside. With floral-scented glass mounted on the front."

"Blood-blossom coated," Sam corrected with a glare.

"Whatever."

"And Mom and Dad said don't go down there," Danny repeated, glaring and throwing his hands up. "That should be enough for everyone in this room."

"Come on, Danny!" Sam replied, turning to him with a sad yet hopeful look in her eye. "Don't you want to help out your folks?"

Danny shifted uncomfortably. "Yes," He answered after a few seconds, dragging out the word like it was the last thing he would get to say before he died.

"It's a hole in the wall," Jazz repeated with a sharp frown.

"Then why not let us go poke around in it?" Tucker asked.

"Because if our parents noticed anything wrong, they will flay Danny and I alive and then prevent you and Sam from ever hanging out with Danny again," Jazz answered, leaning over the back of the couch and looking at Tucker.

"What would go wrong?" Sam argued.

"Those 'ecto-injectors' are designed to measure the levels of goo they have in them," Jasmine replied. "If or when you get it working and it doesn't work like they want it too, they'll just blame you for ruining the portal and then they'll just start over with you never getting a chance to look in the lab, or hang out with Danny, ever again."

Sam looked at Jazz hard in the eye and they held with staring contest for what seemed like hours before Sam looked away. "Fine," She huffed, folding her arms and focusing on the tv screen.

Jazz nodded and smiled in smug superiority. "Good. Now keep it down, I have a paper to write."

Sam watched Jazz walk up the stairs like an angry hawk. When the eldest Fenton child rounded the corner into her room and was out of sight, Sam smiled evilly and looked to Danny. "So if we agree to just press the on button and stay inside the observation area, can we check out the lab?"

Danny's eyes went wide. "Sam, the answer is no."

"But-"

"End. Of discussion," Danny stated, glaring and folding his arms, turning to look at the screen. It was a crappy b-grade horror film about ghosts. The irony would've had them giggling were the tension not thick enough to cut with a knife.

Danny's frown nor his glare would abate. Sam's frown also got deeper as the hours dragged, eyes darting ever so often from the movie to Danny's face, to shift back again just as quickly.

Tucker noted his two friends with a raised eyebrow. He made as if to say something several times, but nothing came out as he couldn't find the words. He simply frowned and pulled out his Ap-phone and checked the time. The words came. "Shouldn't your parents be home?"

Danny checked his watch. It was 9:19 in the evening. "Nah, with the way Dad talks they won't be home until midnight."

"Right," Tucker replied. "I was just wondering, did either of you guys do Lancer's essay due on monday?"

Danny and Sam's eyes widened.

"I'll take that as a no," Tucker with a smug smirk, standing up and stowing his phone in his pocket. "I think we should get going, you and Sam gotta write."

"What about you?" Sam asked accusingly.

"I did it yesterday right when I got home," Tucker smiled widely. "Took me about thirty minutes."

"I hate you," Danny deadpanned.

"I know," Tucker said, cheerily making his way to the front door. "But you love me all the same."

Sam stood up and hastily shuffled to the door as well, stepping outside with Tucker when Danny opened it for them. "Yeah, I got stuff to do at home, anyway. Dishes and other stuff."

"Don't you have maids for that?" Tucker's grin got even more malicious.

Sam hit him on the arm.

"Ow!"

"Go, I'll catch up," Sam snapped.

Tucker quickly complied, since he and Sam lived on the same street. Sam turned to Danny. "Danny…"

"Hm?"

Sam chewed on her lip for a few seconds. "I'm sorry for ticking you off."

Danny visibly deflated, rubbing the back of his head. "It's okay, I'm sorry for getting ticked off, too."

"I just," Sam sighed. "Your parents are two of the coolest people I've ever met and hearing their life's work not, you know, working? Sucks and I wanted to help and-"

"Sam, I get it," Danny smiled. "It's fine. Really."

Sam allowed herself to smile, her eyes twinkling just a bit in the porchlight as she hastily embraced him. "Thanks, Danny."

Danny stiffened and blushed as he awkwardly put his arms around her in turn for a brief moment. "It's a good thing Tucker can't see us."

Sam released him. "We're friends. Friends hug when they make up, right?"

"Y-yeah," Danny answered. "I'm just saying."

Sam nodded and turned on her heels, waving good bye. "See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I'll call you and Tucker over," Danny answered.

Danny watched as Sam caught up with Tucker who was waiting at the corner street light. "So did you guys kiss?"

Danny turned red again and hastily slammed the door as the sound of Tucker's laughter echoed through the street. He let out a breath and shut the TV off. He looked to the lab door, which was shut and had a key-only bolt on both sides of the door. Jazz and Danny had keys to that lab, both of which were hidden somewhere in the house, Danny's under his pillow. He had a sneaking suspicion that Jazz's key was hidden in a landfill somewhere.

_What if Jazz is right?_ Danny thought, slowly turning and making his way up the stairs to his own room.

He arrived at the top. Only three doors were up here, down a short hallway. The nearest was on the left which Danny walked up too, slowly and quietly. It was slightly ajar, with light pouring out of it. Inside, Jasmine was hunched over her Fenton pad, typing away at it's connected keyboard and occasionally looking at an open text book for reference. She was scratching her head when she suddenly groaned and hit her head on her desk.

Danny retreated away from her room and walked to the other door on the left, this one shut. This was the door to his parents room, it was empty and it felt like it. His father's manic energy nor his mother's enthusiasm leaked from the inside like it would if they were there.

Just past that and on the right was Danny's room. He stepped inside and took a seat as his own desk. A Fenton-pad with connected keyboard and printer sat upon it, beneath the shelves mounted on the walls which bore a model space shuttle and Enterprise. The walls also bore N.A.S.A posters and somewhere in the room there was a stuffed astronaut teddy bear.

Danny started typing the paper, barely remembering the topic being on the Three Musketeers and that he had read the original multiple times as a kid. He would have been grateful for such an easy assignment but the words just weren't coming.

_What if there really is no such thing as ghosts?_ Danny thought, leaning back in his chair. He looked to his pillow where his key was hidden away, staring at it with a thoughtful frown. _What if Mom and Dad really have spent their entire adulthood on a wild goose chase? Are they really that crazy?_

He ran his hand through his hair and looked to the window through which the setting sun could be seen.

_I mean, Superheroes exist. People who fly and shoot laser beams out have existed since before I was born, _Danny thought, turning back to his paper, trying to type but the only things that came from his fingers were a jumble of letters that may or may not have been the musketeers motto. These were quickly erased with a hasty spamming of the backspace. _But ghost's? No one's really seen or been able to prove they exist. Not even Mom and Dad._

Danny stood up and walked out of his bedroom. His head was hunched, looking straight down the stairs as he sat back down again at the top. He looked down the stairs but his attention was focused on the lab door, shut with a red and orange sticker at eye level that read 'danger' and the lay just outside of Danny's vision.

_Does that mean that _I'm _crazy for thinking that they might be right?_ Danny thought with a heavy frown, looking toward the door to Jasmine's room. _Maybe I should talk to Jazz. Though, actually, just because she's studying psychology doesn't mean she's a therapist. So there's that. So what do I do?_

Danny sighed. "Come on, you're a Fenton. Fenton's don't mope," he muttered to himself.

He looked back to the slightly opened door to Jasmine's room. It was a hard gaze, one to beckon the rooms occupant out. She never came.

_Maybe Sam was right, _Danny thought. _Maybe we should've tried to fix the portal. I mean, Mom and Dad would've banned Tucker and Sam from hanging out with me and I'd have been murdered in some gory fashion but…_

His fingers were steepled and his brow furrowed.

_But what if they are wrong? _Danny thought to himself. _What if they are crazy?_ _Would getting the portal to work really prove they aren't nuts?_

_Would it help Jazz not hate our parents?_

With a set look in his eyes, Danny Fenton stood and marched back to his room. His key was quickly snatched and he swiftly headed down the stairs. They were allowed in the lab sometimes. Not this night. Danny didn't care. Jerkily the door was opened and shut, carefully avoiding any noise that might tip off Jazz.

At the foot of the stairs was the observation room. A wardrobe to the side and close to the door to the testing partition held jumpsuits. Danny thrust open the door and grabbed one, the thick spandex lined with Kevlar and lead was one size fits all and Danny slid it on. The belt around the waist was a special elastic and held in place by belt loops. One surprisingly not painful snap and the belt fit snugly around your waist like it was made perfectly for you.

Maddie came up with it so her husband could stop snapping belts in his workplace whenever he got really excited. Which was all the time.

The gloves and boots were thick and insulated with straps that operated with the same technology, one quick snap of the straps and the boot was tightened comfortably.

The main jumpsuit was white, made for when his parents wanted to show off the portal to guests when it was working. It was extra thick around the collar area, to protect the jugular and respiratory systems, which was painted black. The gloves and boots were also black, as was the belt and accompanying loops.

Danny inhaled deeply, suit fitting snugly onto his small and thin frame. He grasped the hatch to the door and turned, with great effort, to unseal the lab door. With a hiss of air the door swung inward and Danny took several steps of trepidation down into the testing partition.

The lights inside were motion sensitive and came on when Danny took the first step. The portal inside, however, remained darkened. Like the jaws of oblivion, the darkness at the end warned against any entry, lest there may never be a return.

He inhaled again. There was a lot of things Danny was, but a coward was not one of them. He took a step forward and catching the gleam of the safety-glass before he slammed into it face first. With a frown, he crouched down and again, with much effort, managed to lift the glass off of the floor, enough for him to slip under by going prone.

Inside, Danny stood. He could barely make out the countless wires inside and couldn't see if there were any stuck in the wrong place or unplugged or even cut. The safety glass slid down again behind him, blocking his way out.

_This...was a stupid idea,_ Danny thought with dread. _My parents are going to kill me. They explicitly said don't go in the lab, and here I am. All because I don't have enough faith in them to think they're not crazy._

Danny turned on his heel, and saw that his fingers would find no purchase to grab the glass as he did before. He looked to the right, and there, on the wall, coated in what was coated in blood blossom finish, was the toggle switch to raise the safety glass.

_At least I can get out of here before they figure out somethings wrong, _Danny thought flicking the switch. _I'll lower the glass again when I'm on the other side and they will nev-what was that?_

The sound of something turning on resonated through the portal as the glass lifted. The end of the portal started hum with electrical power and the ectoplasm injectors started to glow green.

_I turned it on,_ Danny thought with elation. Then fear. _Wait, how did I turn-_

Then suddenly the projectors activated and the inside of the portal was engulfed in a swirling vortex of green horror. Every nerve was on fire and numb at the same time as his body was swept up and span as if he was in a whirlpool.

Danny's life flashed before his eyes. His throat was hoarse for some reason before he realized it was because he was screaming. Flashes of black and white. He saw himself, then he saw some sort of color inverted version of himself. He saw the horrific gaping maws of thousands of evil creatures rush to devour him. The motion caused his stomach to churn like an ocean in a storm. He wondered if this is what it would feel like in a hurricane. He wanted to beg for it to stop, but he had long since lost air in his lungs. He tried to breathe, but his lungs were filled with gaseous ice, freezing solid at the first breath.

And then, mercifully, he found himself thrown out of the horrific torrent and onto the lab floor. He felt the floor beneath him. It was warm, like stones basked in the sun.

But he couldn't breathe. The more he forced his lungs to work the more they stabbed at him with icy daggers through the chest. Danny could feel the cold spread to his heart and seep through his skin. He raised an arm from his position on the floor to try to crawl forward, to stand as darkness enclosed on his vision.

"Huh?" The single horrified sound was faded and echoed unnaturally. Danny saw his gloved hand. It was white.

Danny felt himself give, the arm dropping to the floor as the cold in his lungs was expunged in a glowing, blue mist.

Then everything went dark.

* * *

><p><em>Author's Notes: Hello, everyone and thank you for joining me for this fic. This is one of those Danny Phantom re-imagined type fics which used to be quite popular when I first discovered fanfiction, such as Ultimate Danny Phantom by Grumbles and Real Life by Cordria. The first one is problematic but enjoyable and the second one is a complete master piece and I recommend that you read it. All of it. Then review every chapter and read it again.<em>

_I've had this particular plot bunny kicking around in my head for a while and I originally wrote this for my Sister to try to inspire her to draw some more. It came into my head that maybe posting online would actually help me write more because I actually quite like this fiction right now and I really hope you'll like this as much as I do. As I speak, I'm currently typing up chapter two and I hope to get it done quickly._

_I hope you enjoyed this chapter and that you'll review if you feel you have any form of constructive criticism or just any form of encouragement. If you feel the desire to flame, I hope we can speak about our disagreements civilly so that we can both benefit from the discussion._

_See you next chapter, and I look forward to hearing everyone's response. :)_


	2. Origin: Part 2

_The following is a non-profit, fan based work of literary fiction. Danny Phantom is the property of Viacom, Nickelodeon and Butch Hartman. Please support the official release._

* * *

><p>"Our daughter thinks we're insane," Maddie said finally, after several minutes of playing with her noodles. Chopsticks rested in her fingers, barely moving.<p>

Jack was in the middle of a bite after asking what was wrong. The red cotton jacket he was wearing did a great job of hiding the orange jumpsuit, though the protective collar poked up his neck. He slowly put the clump of noodles down and stood up straight, having been leaning over the plate. "I know, Madds."

"It breaks my heart," Maddie continued. "I know we could be considered strange for our..." she chewed on her lip for a minute.

"Love of the weird?" Jack inputted with a careful smile.

"I was going to say hobby," Maddie frowned, then finally forked some noodles into her mouth with her chopsticks.

Jack sighed, and ran a large hand through his graying hair. "Right, like spending almost all our time on and finding all our happiness and our marriage through interest in the paranormal can be considered just a hobby."

"That just makes it sound like Jasmine is right," Maddie frowned deeper.

"That's because in a way, she is," Jack answered, folding his arms on the table. "We are a weird couple of people. We are trained scientists in two very difficult and demanding fields of study that spend most of their free time trying to prove the existence of spectral remnants of the dead, which not even supposed geniuses like, say, Dexter Morrison have been able to do."

"Be fair," Maddie brought her head back up to face her husband. "He's only thirteen."

"Yeah, but that reinforces my point," Jack answered, taking up a piece of chicken in his chopsticks and plopping it in his mouth.

"Which is?" Maddie motioned for him to continue.

Jack held up a finger and swallowed. "Sorry. My point is, no one is giving the idea any consideration. No one. Not the scientific communities oldest farts, not it's youngest and brightest. Which means that no-one is taking a very real and very legitimate threat very seriously."

"Well yes," Maddie replied. "But is it worth our relationship with our daughter?"

"I always thought she'd come around when she saw that we were right," Jack shrugged and took a sip of his glass of soda on the table.

* * *

><p>His breathing was ragged as the word hazily came back into focus, wisps of shapes only sharpening into the corners of plated walls and steel tables in the darkened labs.<p>

The world seemed to be tinted with green as Danny took in one unsteady breath after the next. His body was numb and he could barely arch his head up to look around. He was still on the lab floor, lying on his stomach. With an inhale, Danny pushed himself up, only to find himself floating off of the ground.

"Huh? No! No No No!" Danny hissed as he tried to grasp the ground with flailing hands. He noticed that he was still glowing, his gloves white against the black of his jumpsuit. Danny's eyes darted around in a panic as he continued to drift upward. He spun in place and saw that the Ghost portal was still open, it's green vortex having stabilized to a slow spin of waving ectoplasm.

Then Danny saw something come out and disappear into the floor. Just before he vanished through the ceiling, He felt chills go through his very center with a gasp that felt like it froze his lungs.

He drifted upward, his lungs quivering with the cold to much for him to actually take a breath. As he drifted up through the kitchen, the moonlight illuminated his sight briefly before he was consumed by darkness as he phased through the ceiling.

He floated upwards, upside down, into the familiar sight of his room. He flailed around, trying to right himself. Danny found himself turning upright then back upside down again like the hands on a clock. With a frustrated growl, he punched the floor.

That just resulted in him floating upward again. "No! NO! NO!" Danny shouted in a panicked voice as he tried and failed to grab onto the floor, then the bed-frame that was formerly in reach. "NO! PLEASE! SOMEBODY GET ME DOWN!"

"Danny!" Jazz shouted from outside. "What's going on?"

He thought he felt his heart stop. His eyes went wide at Jazz's voice, before grunting in surprise as he bounced off his rooms ceiling and started to float down.

"Are you alright?" Jazz asked as she entered the room. She looked around and saw Danny slowly descending towards the floor.

Danny and Jasmine locked eyes. Danny's expression was wide eyed disbelief. Jasmine's one of confusion before her mouth fell open. Both faces were colored by the common ink of horror.

"Jazz?" Danny cautiously broke the ice. He noted, since he woke up, that his voice had an unnaturally hollow quality to it.

Jasmine took a step back, her skin paling. "Danny? I-is that you?"

"J-Jazz, you gotta listen to me," Danny answered. "I did something stupid and I need help."

Jazz didn't move from her spot, like she was rooted in the door frame between the hallway outside and Danny's room inside. "What did you do?"

Danny held his breath for what seemed like forever, his eyes pleading. Finally, he let it out. "I went into the lab and turned on the portal."

Jazz went stiff. "You...what?"

"I turned on the ghost portal," Danny said as evenly as he could, though his voice was starting to crack. "Now I'm floating and going through walls."

Jasmine took a step back, shaking her head. "No. No, no, nonononono-" She mouthed. Suddenly, she bolted downstairs.

"No, wait! Jazz! Come back! Please! I need help!" Danny felt tears start to emerge from his eyes, drifting away like they were in zero gravity before falling to the ground when they were just inches away from his face.

He grabbed the bedpost and tried to steady himself on the ground. Just past the bed, he saw the full length mirror that hung on his wall and his breath caught. Danny shoved himself toward the mirror and stopped himself on the wall and saw. His hair was chalk white, his skin pale. The jumpsuits colors were inverted and parts of him were translucent, if not completely transparent.

But the thing that caught him most was his eyes.

They were glowing _green_.

* * *

><p>Maddie's phone rang. Caller ID was the home phone.<p>

"Who is it," Jack asked before eating another clump full of noodles.

"Probably Jazz," Maddie replied. She answered the phone. "Hello?"

There was lots of panic induced ranting on the other side of the phone. "Jazz, honey, slow down. Slow down! I can't understand a word your saying."

Jack had a concerned frown on his face as he took a sip of his soda.

"What? What do you _mean_ Danny went in the lab?" Maddie looked angry and Jack spat out the soda he was drinking in shock.

"He what?" Maddie went pale. "He turned on the-? Jazz, hold on. We're coming home right now. Just _don't panic_. We love you!"

"What happened?" Jack asked, looking worried.

"Danny turned on the portal and now Jazz say's he's floating around," Both parents stood straight up and ran out of the restaurant at top speed. They rounded their van, which was gray in color and flew into the seats. Jack, being a former street racer, took the drivers seat.

"Not again...not again..." Jack was muttering to himself frantically as they both buckled their seat belts.

With speed that no normal van could hope to achieve, they pulled out of the parking lot and sped home as fast as they could get away with. As the engine roared in both Fenton's ears, possibilities ranged in their minds. Was Danny possessed? Was Jasmine? Was there a Ghost in the house that was doing horrific things to their children?

_Was Danny dead?_

They pulled down the alleyway beside their home and into the garage that was situated in the back. The doors practically flew open as the two parents ran back around. Maddie jammed her key into the door lock and threw the door open.

Inside, quivering beside the couch in a fetal position was Jasmine. Her skin was stark white and she was sobbing heavily.

"Jasmine?" Maddie's voice was unnaturally quiet.

Jazz looked up and when she saw her mother, leaped up and into her mothers arms, sobbing all the while. "He's dead, he's dead..." she kept repeating.

"Shhhh," Maddie whispered soothingly, rocking her daughter back and forth. "It's going to be alright. It's all going to be fine..."

Jack overlooked the scene with worry practically drawn on his face with a Fenton-marker. "Where's Danny?"

Jazz went very still. "In his room..."

* * *

><p>Danny heard his parents downstairs. He heard his father's footsteps ascend the staircase that lead up to each of their rooms. "Danny? Are you okay?" Jack sounded cautious.<p>

He was petrified in place, simply floating there in front of his mirror and looking out his door as the Fenton Patriarch's shadow traveled up the stairs with it's owner not far behind. Danny couldn't even speak because that part of his brain seemed to stop functioning. _Oh no. Oh no, no, no. I'm dead. I am so dead. I'm grounded for life. They're going to strap me to a table and dissect me to find out how I work because I prove them right. They're going to ground me for life by dissecting me on an operating table._

Jack's head appeared and seemed to lock onto Danny with wide eyes. He rubbed his eyes with his gloved hands and when he still saw Danny the way he was, he started to walk up the stairs again. Slowly. "Danny? What happened?"

"Dad, I swear I'm not a ghost and this isn't what it looks like!" Danny yelled in a panic and started to float back.

Jack came to the top of the stairs, looking paler than Danny had ever saw him. "Danny-" he stopped. He couldn't form the words that so desperately needed a careful mouth to form.

Danny felt another cold snap go through his lungs, and he hugged himself to stay warm. His teeth were chattering. He was breathing heavily, his breath visible in it's soft, blue glow. "S-stay away...stay away...please stay away..."

"Danny," Jack said as the words started to come. "It's okay. We're not going to hurt you. I promise. We'll fix this and bring you back to normal."

Danny's eyes snapped to his Father. "D-don't strap me to an operating table! Please! I-"

"Son relax," Jack implored, taking a step forward. "It's going to be okay. We just need to extract-"

Danny's eyes got wide and he started to hyperventilate. "No. Don't come near me!"

"Danny! Danny, calm down!" Jack's voice rose in volume as he took a step forward to stop his son from doing something rash. "The ghost is messing with your mind and we need to get it out. Danny, listen to me!"

"No! No! Stay away!" Danny started to float away faster. "Sta-" Danny's plea was replaced with a scream as he suddenly plummeted down through the floor.

* * *

><p>"Danny!" Jack shouted at the top of his lungs. He bolted back downstairs, where he saw Jazz and Maddie huddled together. Jazz's eyes were red from her tears sobbing. Maddie looked stark white. "No time to lose! The ghost took Danny through the floor and I think to the lab."<p>

Maddie stood up quickly with a determined look in her eyes. "You think the Ghost will try to take our son into the Zone with it?"

"I hope not but we have to get down there quickly," Jack said, sliding his jumpsuits hood on. "I don't want to think about what would happen if that's the case."

Maddie slid her hood and goggles. The two Fenton parents slid a pair of re-breathing gas masks on that covered the rest of their face and they bolted down into the lab. The lights came on immediately, with both Jack and Maddie seeing the swirling green vortex their hard work had created. Down in the Testing Partition was Danny, floating in the center and holding himself in a fetal position.

"Jack, the safety glass isn't in position!" Maddie all but shouted, pointing down to the portal below. Her voice held a mechanical tinge too it, as the sound traveled through the gas-masks filters.

"We need to get that back in place, now!" Jack thundered and slammed the Safety Glass Control.

On a nearby monitor, a red warning flashed. _Warning – The Portal is Active. Are you sure you want to retract the Safety Glass?_

"Retract the-" Jack sputtered, glaring at the machine in a dumbfounded and enraged matter. "The machine thought the glass was up? That's what was wrong?"

"Jack! No time!" Maddie answered, confirming the order to the machine. "Yes, we want to retract the safety glass!"

The glass down in the testing partition slid to a close and the ectoplasm inside seemed to fade out almost completely as the glass's safety solution was reapplied, before coming back to life at a much more subdued flare.

Maddie nodded to Jack, who opened the door to the Testing Partition. They walked down the metal stairs slowly, careful to not make any sudden moves that might startle their distressed son.

"Danny seems to be the one in active control of the mind," Jack said, quietly. "The ghost seems to be using his body as a puppet and manipulating his emotions, so we have to be careful not to give it ammo."

"Gotcha," Maddie replied in similar fashion. "We just need to get Danny calm and isolated, then we can worry about pulling the Ghost out of him. Somehow."

Danny floated down and hit the ground in a slump. His eyes looked dazed as he looked up at his parents and he tried to crawl away on his forearms. Danny seemed like he couldn't keep them open, their green glow seeming to fade with each moment.

"Danny," Maddie spoke up. "It's going to be okay. We'll fix this. Don't worry."

Danny tried to stand, but fell again to his hands and knees. He feebly reached out to his parents, only to fall completely with a sharp outtake of breathe that left a layer of frost on the floor in front of him. What happened next surprised both Fenton's.

The Ectoplasm separated at Danny's middle, seeming to bunch up in a glowing blue ring around him. Then the ring split in two, going up and down him, before being sucked inside him from the top of his skull and the bottoms of his feet.

What was left was the Danny they both knew and loved, looking no worse for wear except for his shallow breathing and dark circles under his eyes.

Maddie leaped into action, seeming to slide on her knees to Danny's position. She delicately took Danny's pulse with a pair of fingers pressed to his neck. She sighed in relief. "He's alive and his pulse is normal."

Jack let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "Good. Good," He looked at his comatose son for a moment with sweet relief before asking, "Now where do we keep him until we have this mess sorted out?"

"We have an inflatable bio-containment bubble," Maddie reminded her husband. He pointed to a storage locked on the east wall. "It's in there with it's own pump. We should keep him in there until we send the ghost back. I'll see to spraying the outside with the Anti-Ghost Solution."

Jack got the bio-containment bubble out, alongside a pump and a collapsible cot, presumably for the occupant to sleep in. He set the bubble on the floor and activated the pump. As it whirred happily to fill the bubble, Jack spoke. "We need to look at the security cameras, find out if anything else got inside when Danny turned it on."

Maddie was hooking a hose with mounted power washer to a pressurized tank filled with a pink solution. She seemed to freeze as she processed what her husband said. "Now that is a scary thought." She finished hooking up the equipment and turned to face Jack. "We also need to see if we can figure out what Danny was thinking, coming into the lab when we, _very explicitly_, told him not too."

They both waited in unspoken agreement for the bubble to finish inflating, it's thick walls filling with air. When it was done, Maddie scooped up Danny's unconscious form and carried him into the bubble, it's air-tight, plastic hatch being held open by Jack. Jack then set up the cot and Maddie laid her son upon it. With one last look through their goggles at Danny, they both hurried out of the bio-containment bubble and shut it with a hiss of air.

"Did you want to check the cameras now or..." Jack began.

"No," Maddie interrupted. She took a quick breath. "You go ahead. I need to hook up the air filters and pumps so Danny doesn't suffocate while in there. And give the outside an anti-ghost covering. You go check them first..."

Jack walked away, but heard his wife mutter something about seeing if his friends put him up to it. He went up the stairs and fell into his recliner without bothering to shut the door to the testing partition. He brought up the security camera feed from just after he and Maddie left, Fast forward, fast forward, there.

With the audio turned up over the sound of the power washer down below, Jack watched. He saw Danny's friends complimenting his family. The argument. How Sam tried to get Danny to let them in, only to get shot down. A lot. He smiled slightly as he watched them hug on the porch.

The power washer turned off. Maddie came up the stairs, her hood down and gas-mask hanging from a bandolier on her belt. "So?"

Jack knew exactly what she meant. "No, his friends didn't talk him into it. They tried, but he shot them down. If that were the end of this, I'd have been very proud of him."

"Then why'd he do it?" Maddie grumbled, taking her chair and moving it over to sit by Jack.

Jack hit the fast forward and held it for a few seconds.

"Wait-go back! Go back!" Maddie shouted and Jack eagerly complied. They came back to where Sam and Tucker just left. Danny went up the stairs, turned on his Fenton-pad. He seemed distracted about something. Danny turned it off and went to sit on the stairs. He looked down the stairs, in what was obviously the direction of the lab.

_"Come on,"_ The Danny on the screen said. _"You're a Fenton. Fenton's don't mope."_

"What's he moping about?" Jack asked, frowning. He looked over his screen and saw his son in the bubble, still asleep on the cot.

The Danny on the screen looked back and held his gaze there for several seconds. Then he stood. With a switch of the camera's, they saw Danny grab his key and rush down into the lab. He slid on a guests jumpsuit.

Maddie frowned, her expression matching Jack's. "Why not use his jumpsuit?"

"Maybe he thought we wouldn't notice a change in a guests jumpsuit?" Jack theorized with a shrug. "I don't know, maybe he just didn't think about it."

They watched him go into the lab, then force the safety glass open enough to crawl under. Jack's shoulders tensed. Maddie's brow furrowed. They could barely see the outline of their son in the dark portal. Then the glass seemed to move up and then the inside of the portal was glowing green.

Maddie's breath hitched and Jack flinched as they heard the loudest scream of pain that either of them had ever heard. Inside the portal, they could see their son being tossed and turned in the swirling green vortex like he was stuffed in a laundry machine.

They both got goose-bumps as they saw a glowing, blue translucent version of their son being pulled out of his body, held together only by a thread.

"Suffering spooks!" Jack shouted, his eyes wide with horror. "_The portal almost tore Danny's soul right out of his body_."

Maddie was petrified, her jaw agape as she stared at the screen with a pair of wide, frightened eyes of her own.

Danny's soul seemed to pull ectoplasm into it, which bound itself in a similar fashion and took the form of the color inverted version of Danny and the three Danny's were whirling around in the vortex like a bola thrown into a twister.

Jack and Maddie watched in horrified fascination as the portal stabilized and Danny was thrown onto the floor by force of his momentum. First Danny's body, then his soul, then the new, ghostly Danny, fell onto the floor and into each other, creating a synchronized being.

A massive finger slammed onto the pause button. Both of their skins had gone nearly white. Maddie was in a cold sweat and Jack's teeth seemed to chatter. The two Paranormal experts looked at each other.

"Jack," Maddie started. She gulped and ran a hand through her hair. "I don't know how this is possible, but I think Danny has been possessed by his own ghost."

* * *

><p><em>Author's Notes: I'm pleased to see that I got this chapter completed and posted on schedule. However, I must stress that I don't think that I'll be able to pump these chapters out on a weekly basis, though that is certainly the goal. I am grateful to all of you, those who reviewed, put this story on their favorites and watch list and put ME on their favorite author's list. I am very grateful to all of you. Thank you!<em>

_Now, onto the chapter itself. This IS a deviation from the original show in a MUCH bigger way than the first chapter. In the first chapter, I simply went with the origin suggested by the shows intro, with Danny checking the portal out after his parents gave up. This chapter, however, not only has Jazz and his parents find out about the accident (as was hinted to have been so in the first few episodes of the show) but also finding out about Danny's ghost-half. How will this pan out? You'll see. I hope you've enjoyed this chapter as much as I've enjoyed writing it and I look forward to hearing from all of you soon.  
><em>

_~Fulcon_


	3. Origin: Part 3

_The following is a non-profit, fan-based work of fiction. Danny Phantom is property of Viacom, Nickelodeon and Butch Hartman. Please support the official release._

* * *

><p>Casper High was a very unfortunate establishment. It was understaffed, the cafeteria food wasn't very good and the teachers disliked the students, except for <em>maybe<em> the school councilor. Each member of the faculty knew for a fact the school was still standing was thanks to one man. That man was Mr. Lancer.

Mr. Lancer knew enough about every subject in High School to teach every class and often covered for the other teachers, without over time, when they couldn't teach for a day, and frequently covered an additional class in addition to his English class when a teacher quit without warning.

Such a day was today, when the Social Studies teacher had retired early with a two-week notice having been given two-weeks too late. Mr. Lancer was now standing at the head of the class, going over the events of the previous and current decades with a smirk on his face.

Sam and Tucker were sitting in the same row, with Tucker further back. Both looked positively bored. Sam looked to the desk on her right, which was empty. That was Danny's spot in the class. Sam frowned before slowly turning her head back to Mr. Lancer.

"...and so the city of Townsville became one of the premiere tourist attractions in the world, being the birthplace of the first new superheroes since the beginning of the Cold War," Mr. Lancer's smirk grew wider. "That city, and soon the rest of the world were once again under the security blanket of super powered guardian angels for the first time since Major Glory's retirement after the Nine-Eleven attacks."

Mr. Lancer looked at the classroom, eying each student carefully before his hand snapped out in a rapid point. "Kwan. How old, relatively speaking, were the Powerpuff Girls when they first started their careers?"

Kwan stood up. He was tall for his age and well built. He was wearing a Letterman's jacket for the schools football team which had the number 23 printed on the back. "Uh...weren't they in...kindergarten?"

"Yes, that is correct. They were in kindergarten the first time they saved the world," Lancer smiled and nodded. He made to face the rest of the class before turning to Kwan again. "You may sit down now, Mr. Wong."

Kwan let out a breath of relief as he sat down with a satisfied look on his face.

"Now, these girls," Lancer said, moving to the sliding white board behind him. "Did not look like regular children. In fact, you could say they looked like..."

Mr. Lancer grabbed one part of the white-board and slid it aside, revealing a poster-sized photo which was hung in place. It showed three things which could only be called girls by the dresses and hairs. Their heads were orbs with eyes which were far too big to be anywhere close to normal and their lips seemed to curve far to sharply. Their arms and legs were almost like worms sprouting from their torsos, with their arms bare and their legs obscured by their color-coded dresses and white socks with dark slippers. "...freaks."

There were gasps of horror and revulsion through the class.

"Cool!" That was Sam.

Mr. Lancer's grin widened. "Very."

Sam smirked and looked at some of her classmates who were giving her weirded-out stares.

"Anyway," Mr. Lancer straightened. "They saved a world that had acted just like you did when they first showed up. Some, like Ms. Manson here, thought they looked 'cool' but everyone else thought they were freaky. It didn't stop them from going out and protecting people and by 2003 had earned the respect of most of the world."

A hand shot up. "Yes, Ms. Sanchez?"

From the row last from the back, Paulina stood up. She was captain of the cheerleaders and had the 'spicy latina looks', according to Tucker, to back it up. She wore a pink t-shirt with bare midriff and blue jeans. "Mr. Lancer, I thought the Powerpuff girls looked normal."

Mr. Lancer's expression changed to just short of a frown. "Yes, they do _now_. The Girl's powers are basically anything they can envision doing, provided they practice it enough and when their conflicts started to turn deadly, they trained in what they called 'Vitakinesis', or the ability to affect the bodies functions with their minds to provide first aid."

Mr. Lancer pulled small stack of papers he had been holding. "They also used it to change their appearance to something more 'normal'. They issued a press release regarding their drastic change in appearance to this effect-"

He cleared his throat loudly. "_Due to the panicked nature of those who are in emergency situations and hot zones, people who are unfamiliar with the appearance of the Powerpuff girls or who have a phobia of them due to the same, Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup have used their own powers to drastically alter their body structure over the course of several months to appear more normal and prevent additional panicking from those suffering from traumatic injuries and hysteria._ Hence..."

The old photo containing the freakish looking kindergarteners was pulled away, revealing a much more recent photo, which contained a teen-aged trio of Powerpuff girls with normal arms, legs and torsos, offering much more natural smiles to the camera, wearing more varied outfits but still color-coded. Mr. Lancer's frown deepened. "Though that is perfectly sound logic from them, I have it on good authority from a friend in Townsville that it was partially motivated to stop giving their enemies the ability to call them '_Worm Girls_'."

Murmurs of agreement went through the classroom. Except for Sam, who looked disgruntled.

"Since school is almost done for the day," Mr. Lancer said, briefly glancing at the clock. "I'll just give out homework and let you out. I want a report on the Powerpuff girls first battle with their most persistent foe, Mojo Jojo, focusing on the damages the city suffered during the clash. And remember; These girls saved the world twice before getting out of Kindergarten. What have you been doing with your life?"

The bell rang. Sam and Tucker stood and left the classroom, books slung under their arms.

"_What have you been doing with your life?_" Tucker mock impersonated Lancer. "We don't have superpowers, of course we aren't going to be doing something that important any time soon."

"Sucks they thought they had to go mutate themselves like that," Sam frowned, taking out her phone. "I thought they looked cool."

Tucker was quiet as the two walked out of school. Sam was calling Danny's cell phone and grunted in frustration when it went to the answering machine. Again.

Just like all of yesterday.

"You don't think he's still mad about the portal thing, is he?" Tucker ventured, a thoughtful frown appearing on his face.

"No. I mean, I hope not," Sam was frowning herself. "We made up and everything."

"You made out and everything?" Tucker grinned, and rose his eyebrows suggestively.

Sam gave Tucker one of her famous death glares.

"Sorry," Tucker said sheepishly, straightening his beret. He took out his own phone and dialed, which also came up with the answering machine. "Seriously, though. I wonder what happened."

They walked down the street. Tucker and Sam both lived three blocks away from Casper High and two blocks away from the Fenton's home, which was an apartment that had been bought straight off the landlord for a large sum. They came down to the street they both lived on and stopped.

"Think we should just drop by?" Sam asked, eyes on the street two blocks away.

"Uh..." Tucker thought for a minute before shaking his head. "No. What if they got the portal working and there were...problems?"

Sam stared at her friend for a minute. "That sounds like a reason we _should_ go over."

"No. It does not," Tucker snapped with a frown. "What could we do if there were ghosts all their house? Scream and try to run away before getting murdered? Or slimed? Or murdered?"

"Tucker," Sam rolled her eyes. "You said murdered twice."

"Yeah, because that's the _important one_."

"Well, what if Mr. and Mrs. Fenton got the Portal working and they let Danny stay home for a celebration and he left his phone up in his room," Sam put forward. "He'd probably want us there to celebrate with him, don'tcha think?"

"Well," Tucker was at a loss to say. "...yeah. But just in case-"

"Tucker, we're going," Sam insisted with a sharp frown.

"No. We are not," Tucker folded his arms.

Sam huffed. "Fine then. _I'm_ going."

Tucker stared at his friend as she stalked forward with a dark countenance. "W-wait! Sam! SAM!"

"WHAT?"

"I-I'll come with."

Sam narrowed her eyes. "No, no. It's okay, you obviously don't want too."

Tucker glared in turn. "Don't be a jerk."

"How am I being a jerk?" Sam pointed at him. "You don't want too go, I do. We both go where we want to go and then we're happy."

"But if Danny doesn't want us there, then we should both go," Tucker argued.

Sam blinked. Repeatedly. A lot. Many times. "That doesn't make any sense."

"I mean, you shouldn't be alone when you go over so that we have a better chance of getting in," Tucker explained. "It's harder to say no to two people. If they do say no, well, we tried and I get to say I told you so. We get in, find out what happened and Danny, if he's not doing so hot, has both of his friends to rely on. If he's fine and everything's dandy, we get to bask in the glory."

Sam was quiet, her lips pursed in thought. "That's a good point. Wait, that's _my_ point! Why did you just make my point for me?"

"Because I realized that it's pointless to try and change your mind," Tucker said drolly.

Sam glared again and opened her mouth to speak before getting interrupted.

"Besides that my point is that Danny might be mad at us for trying to contact him when he hasn't contacted us at all hinges on something we don't know; namely, why he hasn't answered his darn phone," Tucker finished, pushing his glasses back up his nose.

"Okay," Sam said, continuing on her path. "Let's go."

Tucker followed. Soon, they found themselves at the front door the the two-story apartment building. Fire escapes were mounted on each of the windows, with the ladders retracted up high and bolted in place. Some sort of metal-cross beam was mounted at the top, the beginnings of some project of Mr. Fenton's that had been put on hiatus for the time being. All the lights were dark and there wasn't a sound from the inside.

Sam walked up the door, with Tucker hesitantly following behind. She rung the doorbell. It seemed to echo throughout the whole home before reaching their ears. They waited for a few seconds. There was no sound of anything on the inside, not Jack's boisterous 'I'll get it!' that they were usually treated too before the door opened.

Sam rang the doorbell again.

Still nothing.

Tucker rang the doorbell, repeating his bell-ringing machine gun stunt from a few days ago until Sam slapped his hand away.

The air seemed unnaturally still with a sudden, unexplainable chill.

Sam's brow furrowed and Tucker frowned. "Maybe they're not home?" Tucker offered with a nervous grin.

Growling, Sam jumped from the steps and around to the alleyway on the side. From her vantage point, she could see the Fenton's gray van outside the small garage. "They're home. The Van's the only car they have, right?"

"Right," Tucker sighed.

Sam looked around. The back door was shut and found to be locked after she tested it. She swore under he breath and stalked back down the alleyway, Tucker following her. "You know, I hope no one thinks we're trying to break in or anything."

Sam took a deep breath and shook her head. "Yeah. Let's go, maybe they just took a cab or something."

They heard the sound of the front door opening and Sam and Tucker quickly found themselves looking up into the blood-shot eyes of Jack Fenton. His hair was greasy from lack of showers and he had a five o'clock shadow. He smelled like he hadn't showered in days. His eyes were wide with worry as he looked at the two teens, then around for something before coming back to them again. "What. Are you two. Doing here?"

"Or they could definitely be home," Tucker whispered, his own eyes wide behind his glasses. Then he tried to be friendly. "Hi, Mr. F. We just came by to see how Danny was doing-"

"Danny?" Jack's eyes got even wider. "Danny...Danny's not doing good. Come inside, quickly!"

"Uhhhh..." Sam's eyes were wide too. "I don't think we sh-"

"No time!" Jack snapped, his head snapping to various directions, settling on the van for several seconds. "We're not safe! We need to get inside! NOW!"

All three of the group jumped when they heard the sound of tearing metal. Tucker and Sam turned to look, and saw the wheels of the Fenton van spinning on their own. From the screeching sounds, the emergency brakes were not doing a good job of holding the vehicle in place. It slowly backed up and turned to face the group.

"Inside," Jack started trembling. "Get inside! Now, nownownow!"

Sam and Tucker screamed as the Van picked up speed and chased after them, clearly having no driver nor passengers. The screeching only intensified as it accelerated down the alley, only barely missing the three as the jumped to the side, clear of the vans path. It wound up shooting into the road, trying to stop and leaving skid marks in the road.

Sam and Tucker were on their backs, propped up on their elbows. They were almost unable to move as they watched the demon van slowly turned around to face them, the brakes whining and moaning in protest as it did.

Jack moved quickly, and picked up both Sam and Tucker in each arm and bounded over to the front door. He all but tossed the two through the front door before coming in and slamming it shut and slammed against it, back first.

He was panting heavily. "You two...picked a really...really bad time to show up."

Tucker's knees were shaking as he stood up. "I'll say! What the crap was that?"

"Ghost," Jack answered as he started to completely lock up the front door.

"Ghost?" Sam went pale. "There's ghosts loose?"

"That, or it was just a trace amount of ectoplasm that found it's way into our van and animated it," Jack offered as he slumped down against the door, the locks firmly in place. "You can thank Danny for that."

"What?" Sam and Tucker said at the same time.

"He turned on the portal," Jack said with a grin. A panicked, bundle of nerves grin, but a grin nontheless.

"He went and turned on the portal after chewing us out when we suggest we go do that _exact thing_?" Sam stood up, face full of rage and fear forgotten. "I'm gonna kill him!"

"That might not actually be necessary," Jack said, running his hand through his hair and standing up again.

Sam and Tucker were quiet and their eyes went wide as the processed what they just heard. It was then that they noticed their surroundings. The TV had been blown out and the couch they sat on just two days ago had been upended, with it's cushions looking like they were ripped open. The contents of shelves were emptied onto the floor in so many pieces. The walls had large gashes in the paint and there was some sort of moaning coming from upstairs.

"What do you mean?" Sam's voice was barely over a whisper.

"Is Danny dead?" Tucker asked in the same manner.

"You'll see when we get into the lab," Jack said, moving forward. "That's the only safe place in the house right now and we need to get back down there. Come on."

The two friends mutely followed the Fenton Patriarch, entering the door which they had never so much as seen open in all the time they had been there. The stairs down below seemed to go on forever as they descended until, finally, they came to the bottom. Sam and Tucker looked around with expressions of awe. The monitors were on, revealing security feeds of every room of the house. Jasmine was sitting there in front of them all, nibbling on the eraser of a pencil, with an empty note-book and her Fenton pad strewn in front of her.

She did not look well. Her hair was in chaotic disarray. There were bags under her eyes and she was muttering to herself as she stared at one of the monitors.

"It's thanks to Jasmine here we even knew you were outside," Jack's voice popped both of them out of their reverie. "We've all been down in the lab since Saturday night, when Danny-uh..."

Jazz turned to face them. Her eyes were similarly blood-shot and she was quivering in her seat. She let out a sigh of relief. "Oh thank heavens! You're both okay."

"Thanks to your quick thinking," Jack smiled.

"I almost wasn't fast enough," Jasmine replied. "I'm sorry you almost got ran over. Really! I am!"

"Jazz, it's okay," Sam raised her hands in a placating manner.

"I just thought you'd go away if we didn't come to the door and-" Jasmine started rambling.

"_Jasmine_," Jack's voice overpowered the spastic ramblings. "It's okay. They're safe and that's what matters."

There was the sound of something crashing upstairs. Jack looked up the stair well. "Whew, good. We closed the door. The ghosts won't get in."

"How does a closed door stop a ghost?" Tucker asked, joining Jack in looking up at the stairwell. "Don't they go through walls?"

"They do," Jack explained. "But we've painted the entire lab top to bottom with anti-ghost solution, mixed with a primer Maddie whipped up. It's stuck to the walls and because of the primer, our entire lab isn't painted pink."

Tucker and Sam chuckled.

"What so funny?" Jack asked with a critical glare.

"Sorry," Tucker said, both he and Sam straightening. "The thought of this lab being painted pink is kind of funny."

Jack blinked. "Oh! Okay, yeah," he started laughing too. "That is funny. Sorry, I've been up since early this morning trying to figure out how to get rid of the ghosts."

Sam's brow furrowed and she frowned sharply. She crossed her arms and asked. "Where's Danny?"

Jack's shoulder's slumped and he pointed out the window into the other part of the lab. "Down in the main lab, while I'm trying to figure out anti-ghost weaponry, Maddie has been trying to help him."

Tucker and Sam looked down into the testing partition, where they saw Maddie at an improvised work-station, constantly typing at her computer. She was set up outside a plastic bubble which had some sort of black-clad figure floating inside.

"...Danny's...inside the bubble?" Sam asked, going a bit pale herself. Her hands were pressed against the glass, her eyes boring down there.

Tucker joined her, looking down into the partition, and taking note of the dark, black hole fixed at the back of the lab. "And the portal was definitely on?"

"Yes and yes," Jack sighed. "You want to go see him?"

Tucker and Sam looked at each other, before nodding vigorously. Sam had a glare and frown on her face, while Tucker seemed more concerned and thoughtful.

Jack pressed a button. "Maddie, Sam and Tucker are here. They want to see Danny."

"One second," Maddie's voice tinned from the speakers on the roof. "Okay, Danny says he wants to see them too."

"Great," Jack answered. "They'll be down in a second."

Jack gestured for the two to follow him and he opened the hatch to the testing partition. Sam and Tucker went through, carefully traveling down the steel steps. As they came down, they saw a hole in the wall, dark and silent.

_That must be the portal,_ Tucker thought as he and Sam made it to the floor. _Good thing they shut it off. I don't want to be in the same room if ghosts were coming out of the thing._

They came to the bubble. Mrs. Fenton was off to the side, and turned to face them. She, like her husband and daughter looked like a mess. Bags under the eyes, messy hair and a nasty frown. "Sam, Tucker. How'd you get in here?"

"Van," Sam replied offhandedly as her attention was on the bubble.

Inside was Danny, or some facsimile. He was floating, his skin was deathly pale. Raven colored hair seemed to have been bleached in fright with eyes that glowed green stared back at them. Danny was wearing dark jumpsuit and each of his limbs were missing, each being some form of dark mist to seemed to smoke from empty stumps.

Danny's smile was frail, and his arm solidified into a white, gloved hand as he waved to his friends. He offered a weary chuckle. "Hey guys. I did something stupid."

"You're kidding," Sam frowned and crossed her arms.

"I wish," Danny's voice seemed to echo unnaturally with each syllable.

"Sam," Maddie's voice was testy. "Don't antagonize him for doing something you were wanting to do yourself."

Sam glared at her for just a moment, before faltering to the gaze of the slightly crazed, sleep deprived bio-chemist who probably knew about a hundred different, very painful ways to kill her. "Sorry, Mrs. Fenton. I didn't mean anything, really-"

"Don't," Maddie raised her hand to stop her. "Jack and I have been wanting to talk to to the two of you for a few days now, so when you're done with Danny we-"

"_Mom,_" Danny started.

"Don't you _Mom_ me," Maddie retorted. "You're the one with a ghost doing crazy things to you because you did the exact thing we _told you not too do_."

"I know, and I'm grounded for life when we figure this out," Danny replied with equal amounts of venom and hurt in his voice. "But right now, I just need you to not murder Sam and Tucker for me, okay?"

"Well you seem to be doing okay," Tucker interjected uneasily. His eyes seemed to dart uneasily from Danny to Maddie every few seconds. "I mean, except for the, uh, you know-"

"The smoking limbs and voice that sounds like it's on stereo?" Danny afforded himself a laugh. "Yeah, you could say I've been better."

"Heh, you could probably be a superhero if you got this under control or something," Tucker grinned.

"No, he couldn't," Maddie snapped from her place at the computer terminal.

"Uhhhh... right now Tucker, I'm just trying to avoid getting vivisected." Danny shuddered at the thought.

Maddie looked stricken. "Danny, we would never-"

"If you thought it would help me?"

Maddie was silent. Then, after several grim seconds that seemed to take an eternity with a worried smile, "Maybe a little?"

Danny gestured with his hand at his Mother with a tired look and a groan.

"Speaking of superheroes," Tucker continued, looking more than a little unsettled. "Mr. Lancer gave us homework on the Powerpuff Girls."

Danny hung his head and he slowly seemed to flip in place. As he came back right side up. "Anything in particular or just them in general?"

"About their first fight with that mutant monkey they're always smacking around in some corner of the globe," Tucker relayed.

"You mean Mojo Jojo," Maddie supplied, standing up from the work-station and stretching.

"Yeah, that guy," Tucker answered. "Focus is on the damages the city suffered during the fight."

"Great, I'll get right on that," Danny sardonically answered from his place in the bubble. "It's right after getting solid limbs back and figuring out how to land."

Tucker snickered.

"You should've been there for it though," Sam said with a manic grin on her face. "Mr. Lancer showed us a picture of what they used to look like. They were like freaky worm-kids from hell. It was awesome!"

"We'll have to look it up later," Danny replied, returning the grin.

Jack's voice came off of the intercom. "Hey kids, can we see you up upstairs for a few minutes? I just need to ask you both a question."

"Sure thing, Mr. F," Tucker turned to leave.

Sam looked at Danny with a glare. Her gaze slowly softened. "Hang in there, alright? We'll be right back."

"I'm not going anywhere," Danny said, having stopped spinning. "Thanks, Sam."

A small smile graced Sam's lips as she followed Tucker up the stairs. Maddie had gone ahead. When Sam and Tucker entered the Observation Platform, the door automatically shut the door behind them.

Jack looked grim. "Now that you've seen what happened to Danny, we hope you can shed some light on something for us."

"We'll help however we can," Sam said quickly.

"So," Maddie began. "Saturday night, Sam, you tried to convince Danny to come down into the lab and try to get the portal working in spite of the fact that we told him, that under no circumstances was he to come down here."

"Y-yeah," Sam admitted, biting her lip. "But he shot us down! I mean, there was no-"

"Up-up-up," Maddie help up her hand. "I know. I heard your reasons for wanting to go down into the lab and while Jack and I are somewhat flattered you wanted to help us, we told him not to come down here for reasons that you saw down below. But that's not what we wanted to ask you two."

"Then what _did_ you want to ask us about?" Tucker seemed perplexed.

"Did either of you have any idea that he was going to do this?" Jack asked. His brow was furrowed and his lips seemed to be fighting against a frown. "We saw him work on his Fenton-pad, but since ghosts have moved into the upstairs-"

To punctuate that statement, there was a loud crash from upstairs. Everyone winced.

"-we haven't been able to see what he did on there. Did he text either of you about it or call you?"

"I didn't get anything, did you?" Tucker asked Sam, who shook her head. They both shook their heads no at the Fenton parents.

"Not a clue."

"He didn't tell us anything."

"Dead set against it."

"_Completely_ against it."

"Okay, okay," Maddie rubbed her temples. "Thank you for that. I don't suppose you know why he did this, do you?"

"He hasn't told you?" Sam asked in confusion.

"No, he's been very tight lipped about it," Jack explained, rubbing his forehead. "That hasn't made things easier on Maddie and I, let me tell you..."

"You said you were working on ways to get rid of the ghosts?" Tucker asked, adjusting his glasses. "Maybe if you figure that out first, figuring out how to help Danny would be easier."

"It would be," Maddie said, slumping into a chair with a sigh. "I would put him on an IV with anti-ghost solution, but as you could see, I can't even get a hold of his limbs. That and when we exposed him to a minor dose, there was a visible chemical reaction involved glowing red smoke and he was screaming for four minutes. I'm sure a direct dose might kill him before driving the ghost away."

"Okay, so how about fighting the ghosts off?" Sam asked, paler now that she had heard of the previous attempt to get rid of the ghost in Danny.

"Can't. There's already four by our count that are already loose in Amity plus the two that are in our house," Jack said, yawning with the back of his hand to his mouth.

"There's already four-" Tucker started in alarm.

"Oh that's bad," Sam sputtered. "That's really, really bad."

"I know!" Jack cut them off loudly. "Which is why we can't fight off the ones upstairs, that'll bring the number of monsters loose in Amity up to six! What we need is a way to catch them and bring them back so we can funnel them back into the portal."

"Hey, guys!" Danny's voice came off the intercom. "Check it out, I got my arms back!"

Everyone looked out the windows to see Danny, very excitedly, waving at them with both hands. Everyone waved back.

"That's great Danny!" Maddie offered sweetly. "Keep going and see if you can't reverse your transformation like what happens when you fall asleep."

"Will do!" Danny's voice sounded strained. Then he muttered, "Thanks for not killing each other."

"Reverse his transformation?" Sam asked. "What does that mean?"

"It's the weirdest thing," Jack explained with a shrug. "Normally, when a ghost possesses a person, that person essentially becomes a slave to the ghost until expunged or suffers from severe medical maladies, prime examples being the Biblical account of Jesus exorcizing Legion and Josephus's accounts in his work, 'Antiquities Of The Jews'."

"_Religious _accounts?" Tucker raised an eyebrow at that. "That is a weird source of information to be used by a pair of scientists."

"Yeah," Jack agreed with a smirk. "But since the nearly all of the scientific community doesn't believe in ghost's, we've had to turn to the only records of ghost we could find, the occult and religious texts. While we've never actually used any of the rituals we've learned about, and probably never will, we're at least willing to believe those accounts to have some amount of truth to them."

"In any case," Maddie interjected. "Our sources of information notwithstanding, Danny is different. His brain-scans are normal, accounting for the severe trauma he's suffered over the past fourty-eight hours. The ghost's influence on his brain is non-existant and when he falls asleep, a glowing ring appears at his center, splits in two and travels up and down his body. When they're journey to the top or bottom is done, they disappear, leaving our son as he normally is, his t-shirt, jeans, tennis shoes, blue eyes and black hair."

"You're right," Tucker cupped his chin. "That doesn't sound normal. F-from what you've told us, I mean."

"So..." Sam began. "What exactly happened the other night, anyway?"

"We'll show you," Jack said, grabbing a computer screen and turning it to face Sam and Tucker. "And then we'll tell you our theory."

Jack started the clip. Sam and Tucker watched Danny enter the portal. They flinched with wide eyes at the pained scream, only to inch closer as the video as it continued. It stopped at a per-determined point, right when Danny fainted that first time.

They both held the same stunned, deer-in-the-headlights expression for several seconds.

"What was that?" Sam asked. "Seriously, what happened to Danny? There he was, then there was a blue Danny and then there was the ghost-Danny-thing we see down there."

"The blue Danny was his soul," Maddie explained. "The portal nearly _ripped our son's soul_ right out of him."

They were quiet again, looking at each other with expressions of horror and fascination. Mouths struggled to find words as they looked from each other to the screen in front of them. Tucker raised his hand in a gesture to the screen and prepared to speak, but no words came out. Sam stared at the screen.

"Geeze," Tucker replied. "Okay, that...wow. Ummm...yeah."

Jazz looked at the monitor from the back with wide, panicked eyes, the memories of seeing what happened on that screen replaying in her mind before she shook it off and went back to watching the cameras on the screen. After looking between the monitors for several seconds, she spoke. "I can't find the ghosts on the cameras."

"They must've moved on to greener pastures," Jack smiled. "Finally. Just to be sure, though, Jazz can you go over the cameras and see where they went?"

"I'm doing that right now," Jazz said, executing several commands on her keyboard. The she was mumbling something incoherent as she went over the screens. "Oh, there they are. They went into the plumbing from the guest bathroom upstairs."

"Nothing they can get to except the town's reservoir," Maddie said with a relieved smile. "Maybe we can get upstairs, shower and get a good nights rest tonight."

Sam and Tucker had noticed the smell. They did not care.

"You were going to tell us a theory?" Sam asked with a slight crack in her voice.

The three were quick to get back on task. Jasmine went back to checking the cameras while Jack and Maddie returned their attention to the two teenagers sitting before them.

"Right. Well, ghosts are traditionally described as beings that are remnants of those who have passed on but have some sort of 'unfinished business' and can't fully move on until they've completed it," Jack began and as the two impromptu students nodded in understanding, he continued. "But not every soul in the millions that have been murdered, or left with something undone remains on Earth. Where do they go? They go to the ghost zone, and the ghost zone is flooded with what we call 'ectoplasm', and when spirits come into contact with ectoplasm, they take it, shape it and make a new...body, I guess, out of the stuff."

"Why do they need a body for stuff?" Sam asked. "I thought they could just go through walls or haunt people just fine without one."

"Why indeed?" Jazz muttered darkly from her spot at the security cameras.

"We don't know," Jack replied. "However, there's a lot of literature stating that rogue spirits usually possess people when they come into contact with them, which suggests that a body or even some physical form is preferable to none at all, and the ghost-zone essentially makes one for spirits that pass through."

"Again, why?" Sam demanded.

"Again, we don't know," Maddie snipped back. "What we do know is that when Danny's soul came out of his body like you saw, ectoplasm invaded it and became a new form for it like it would for any spirit that passes through it, we assume. However, Danny's soul was still attached to his body, so when he came free of the portal, the soul rejoined the body, taking the ghost with it."

"So can he still do ghost-stuff then? Tucker asked, readjusting his glasses.

"He was floating and going through walls. When I first saw him like this, parts of him were invisible" Jack said. "It's not normal possession. It's like Danny has a..." Jack struggled to find the word, looking to his wife. "A ghost...clone? A clone. A ghost clone of him that's sharing space inside him and comes out periodically."

"So far his vitals, or what few I've been able to take, have been normal," Maddie added. "However, considering how volatile ghosts have been in the past, or what we've been able to find in our research, I don't think it'll be long before this clone develops a mind of it's own."

There was a rumbling sound that echoed from down in the testing partition.

"Mom, what was that?" Danny asked from down below.

"I don't know," Maddie answered, her finger on the intercom button. "That wasn't you?"

Danny shook his head down below. "Nuh-uh. Nope."

Tucker looked down into the testing partition. "Uh, Mr. F? You said you painted the whole lab in anti-ghost solution, right?"

"Yup, no ghost is getting in here!" He said proudly.

"You painted the glass, the doors and the walls?"

"Yup!"

Tucker saw, at the edges of the lab, a small vent, with the floor of the lab slanted toward it. He pointed to it. "How about that vent?"

"I got the vent covers and inside of the vents myself," Jack said, joining the techno-geek at the window. "But that's not a vent you're pointing too, that's a drain into the labs septic tank."

Tucker's frown deepened. "Did you get the drain and septic tank?"

Jack seemed confidant in his reply for the first half second. Then his face changed to a wide eyed one. "Jazz, where did you say the ghosts went?"

"...into the plumbing?" Jazz squeaked from her chair, inching it away from the clear window.

The growl returned, this time much louder and there seemed to be a green glow coming from the drain. Down in the bubble, Danny gasped and started shivering, a blue wisp of energy energy from his mouth.

"Oh no," Jack muttered with a horrified look on his face. "That can't be right, the drain should already be coated in the stuff. They can't get in!"

"If they stay away from the tank itself," Maddie replied, standing up immediately. "The pipes are slick enough and the drain won't hold liquid unless it's been painted on- Jack! Get your pack, we gotta fight 'em off!"

Jack and Maddie bounded over to the wall, where back mounted pumps were hung, each having a clear tank filled with pink liquid mounted. They slung them over their shoulder's and turned on the pumps.

"Kids, stay up here!" Jack bellowed as he opened the lab door.

Tucker was trembling. Sam nodded in affirmation. Jasmine curled up into a fetal position in her chair with tears starting to emerge from her eyes. "No. No, no...please no..."

The door to the Testing Partition slammed to a close behind the two Ghost Hunters. They ran down below as the drain started to glow brighter and brighter. Then the cover over the drain blasted ten feet into the air and hit the floor with a deafening clang.

A single, green tentacle reached its way into the lab.

* * *

><p><em>Post Script Disclaimer: The previous was a non-profit, fan-based work of fiction. The Powerpuff Girls are owned by Time Warner, Cartoon Network and Craig McCracken. Please support the official release.<em>

_Author's Note: I have to say, I am completely blown away by the positive reviews of the last two chapters and I hope you'll enjoy this one as well. Thank you all so much! You are all too kind and I enjoy hearing from each one of you. Also, I do owe everyone an apology, as this chapter was supposed to be released a week ago. I am sorry, though I do believe a chapter a week is beyond me now. Not that I won't try, but at minimum, I will do my utmost to release a chapter every two weeks. If I slip that schedule, I will be concerned with myself.  
><em>

_Now, as for the surprise crossover, I would say that it's not really a surprise. I did foreshadow such a thing in chapter 1, even if I didn't say who. Also, in chapter 2, I mentioned another property I will be including and will be getting a reconstructive treatment just like Danny is getting and the Powerpuff Girls will get. It'll be like Avengers to a degree. As well as a fourth and fifth, though we won't be hearing about those until the sequel, if I get that far.  
><em>

_I hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it and please continue to review as you have done or will do! If you believe this chapter was a little heavy on exposition, I would agree with you and if you have any insights I could use to improve as a writer, please do not hesitate to use the review button to tell me so! Thank you in advance and I will see you all next time!_

_~Fulcon  
><em>


	4. Origin: Part 4

_The following is a non-profit, fan based work of literary fiction. Danny Phantom is owned by Viacom, Nickelodeon and Butch Hartman. Please support the official release._

* * *

><p>The ghost slithered out of the grate one tentacle at a time until it's grotesque form was there for all to see. It had a humanoid torso and head but that's where the similarities ended. It was missing arms and it's mouth seemed to be sewn together, giving a fanged appearance when it bared it's 'teeth' in a predatory manner. The torso seemed to be missing it's left half and where it's legs should've been were a mess of tentacles of various lengths swirling around. It's eyes were wide and darted every which was before settling on the bubble and the ghost boy inside. Jack and Maddie hadn't even gotten close to the grate before it emerged and were preparing their pumps.<p>

That's when the second one showed it's ugly face. It had the opposing torso piece and was just was terrifying, the way it's eyes moved independently of each other until they both settled right on Danny.

Jack acted first. Raising the nozzle attached to his pack, he fired a wide spray at both ghosts. The stream of pink fluid impacted, and seemed to nearly tear them in half. causing the ghosts to howl in pain. An awful, otherworldly sound that caused Jack and Maddie's hairs to stand up on end.

The two ghosts recovered quickly, and flew upward in an effort to circle around the two ghost hunters. Maddie took careful aim and shot one of the ghosts in it's deformed head, causing it to stagger in the air.

"Back! BACK!" Jack shouted, spaying more in an effort to 'wall' the ghost away. "You're aren't getting past me!"

Maddie took another precise shot to the other ghost, hitting it dead in the chest. "Jack, conserve your ammo!"

Jack stopped then face palmed. "Right, sorry Madds!"

Both ghosts had recovered and were looking at the Jack and Maddie with angry scowls. One twisted it's torso all the way around with a chilling chattering sound as it did before rocketing forward like a toxic missile.

The other disappeared into thin air, it's malicious grin fading away last.

Jack and Maddie gasped and threw themselves to the ground, just barely avoiding the rushing specter. The ghost collided with the bubble and was sent careening back. The bubble itself shook like jello on a plate but held firm. Inside, Danny yelped and managed to float back several feet while holding himself to stave off the cold.

"Get away from our son!" Maddie screeched, sprayed the ghost dead on with her hose.

The ghost's face seemed to fold in on itself for an instant and the lab was filled with an unholy wail as it struggled to remove itself from the onslaught. Then she felt something wrap around her ankles and pull her up. She was being held upside down as the other ghost came into view. It's eyes were gone, replaced only with the dark, soulless pits of its sockets. It twisted it's head upside down and glared into Maddie's soul.

"Let go of my wife!" Jack bellowed, leaping forward. He released a short puff of mist, knocking the ghost back. With a scream, the tentacles released Maddie and Jack caught her, upside down, by the waist.

"Thanks Jack," Maddie said as Jack let her down on all fours. She sprung back to her feet, hose in hand.

"Mom!" Danny shouted from behind. "Dad! One's cutting it's way in!"

Jack and Maddie turned around so fast the whiplash was practically audible. Bio-dome was rapidly deflating as a floating scalpel slashed through the air-filled plastic. They could feel the air rushing out of the bubble as it fell, the whoosh of artificial wind not stopping as the ghost floated through the hole.

The bubble seemed to be fighting to stay inflated with the air-pump still chugging away. It would come up then fall again, repeatedly. Danny and the Ghost were trying to maneuver inside around the plastic. The Ghost howled in pain on inside when it undoubtedly tried to phase through the tumbling balloon.

* * *

><p>"Behind you!" Sam shouted on the intercom.<p>

Sam and Tucker watched as Jack and Maddie turned around again, spraying the ghost away before rushing over to the dome. Jasmine was in a fetal position, tears falling freely from her eyes as she muttered to herself in a panic. "Not real...not real..."

Tucker went back to his phone, were he was going over some of the most advanced equations any Highschooler could run on his phone. Some college kids might just look at what he was doing and say 'yup, that's math' and continue on their merry way, but Tucker was proud of his math grade. He also, however, trying to figure out what precisely happened in the portal in purely mathematical terms, going over the lab notes that had been generously left open on the computer when the ghosts decided to arrive.

Sam fell down onto the floor with a scream as something slammed into the window. Tucker looked up and saw one of the ghosts had appeared right outside the window, it's tentacles having circled up and framed it's body like a sinister octopus about devour someone whole.

Tucker got up and started to back away, Sam was crawling away on her back. Jasmine had gone completely still at the malevolent green glow that had suddenly engulfed the observation deck.

It moved forward, starting to phase through the glass into the room when it suddenly retched back with a scream. It tried again and again, but couldn't get past the clear, transparent barrier that was the anti-ghost solution spayed on the window panes.

The ghost disappeared, the light returned to normal. Sam let go of the breath she was holding. Tucker was shaking and Jasmine got out of her position and started to sit up with wide eyes.

"Are they gone?" Jasmine asked, looking up over the counter and through the window. She gasped and turned around. "Get down!"

Jazz tackled both Sam and Tucker to the ground in a rush and the sound of shattering glass echoed above them. A steel table landed with the clanging of metal on metal amidst shattered glass on the floor and the room was again filled with an evil green light.

They all looked up and saw the ghost float in through the freshly broken window.

Jack shouted something from down below but they couldn't make it out over the pure terror they all felt as the ghost floated down into the room. It chuckled darkly then darted for the closest target: Jasmine.

She screamed and started to scramble away only for tentacles to wrap themselves around her wrists and ankles. She was lifted easily amidst screams and tears. Tentacles flipped the table upright and pinned Jazz to it's top spread eagle.

Jazz's screams filled the air.

"Let go of my daughter!" Jack arrived in the nick of time, throwing open the door to the lower lab. His face was that of a man mad with rage as he threw is massive form and rippling muscles at the ghost which currently held Jazz to the floor. The ghost actually stopped and gawked at the massive beast of a man that was incoming like a meteor.

Only for said beast of a man to phase right through the ghost like it wasn't there. Jack collided with the floor with an impact that shook the room. Maddie appeared an instant later with her hose gripped tightly in her hands. She rushed forward at the ghost, attempting to beat it back with the end of the spout, only for it to dodge with unnatural flexibility.

Tucker saw that Maddie was out of ammunition, the tank on her back being empty.

Jack bounded back onto his feet and tried to grab the ghost from behind in a bear-hug and it was plainly visible that his pack was gone entirely.

Sam and Tucker gasped as the second ghost flew over them to the melee. It snatched Jack, wrapping it's tentacles in one of his arms and threw him to the ground again. In the only tentacle it didn't use, it held a scalpel.

The ghost Maddie was engaging with curled up one of its tentacles into a ball and socked her in the stomach and slammed two others across her back, bringing her to the floor.

Jasmine was still pinned to the table. She was trembling and she couldn't breathe for all the screaming she had done. The ghost with the scalpel closed in on her. It rose the blade high, and brought it down fast.

Jasmine's heart stopped for an instant.

But the blade was held fast, right above her chest. It would have sliced right down the middle, were it not for the white, gloved hand that had seized the tentacle and scalpel.

Danny was glaring hatefully into the ghosts empty sockets. "Tentacles. _Off. My sister._"

Then Danny's other fist slammed into the ghosts face. It arched back with a squeal and Danny kicked it in the stomach. It collided with the floor and bounced away. With a snarl, Danny tackled the other ghost, which was retreating.

Tentacles that had bound Jasmine had slid off of her and she scrambled off the table with a sob of fear.

Danny and the two ghosts quickly found themselves tangled in an intense melee. They were trying to tie their tentacles around Danny's extremities, only for them to dissolve into the familiar black mist and reforming in time to strike back.

An elbow sent a ghost up the stairs and Danny flew after it. Punch and after punch landed in the things gut and when they collided with the upstairs door, Danny kicked the ghost with both feet and caused the door to fly off it's hinges. They other wrapped itself around Danny's back, and the fight was taken upstairs.

* * *

><p>Maddie was holding her stomach and wheezing. Jack looked up the stairs with a slack jawed expression, which only intensified as he heard the sounds of banging, punching and slamming from upstairs.<p>

"Jack," Maddie wheezed. "We-we need to find a way to contain the ghosts if we want to help Danny!"

"But he's up there, right now, fighting two on one!" Jack shouted, pointing upstairs.

"And we'd just get in the way!" Maddie yelled back. "There's nothing we can do unless we can trap the ghosts!"

Tucker and Sam pulled each other up, looking slightly battered but no worse for wear. They were both looking up the stair case where the sounds of war emanated.

"Well we can't just sit here!" Jack argued back.

"That'd be suicide!" Maddie rejoined. "I'm not leaving Jasmine down here without help!"

Tucker took out his phone and looked at the calculations he was going over. He put in a few more variables then ran the equation.

"What help would we be if the ghosts came down again?" Jack asked. "We're out of anti-ghost solution!"

"What help would we be to Danny if we went up there!"

Jack was sputtering. "W-well, we can't just leave him up there!"

Tucker raised his hand with an urgent look. "Uhhh...Mr. And Mrs. F?"

"That's why we need to work quickly to get something to capture the ghosts!" Maddie exclaimed. "It's the only chance he's got!"

"Mr. and Mrs. F?" Tucker asked again, getting louder.

"I've been working for almost three days on it!" Jack raised his hands defensively. "I've got nothing!"

"Well there has to be something you missed!"

Jasmine was back in her fetal position.

"_Guys_!" Sam shouted at the top of her lungs.

"_What?_" Jack and Maddie shouted at the same time.

"I think Tucker has an idea!" Sam snapped back at them, pointing at Tucker.

The two Fenton parents were silent.

Tucker nervously adjusted his glasses. "...thanks for that, Sam."

"Well?" Jack said. "Do you have an idea?"

Tucker nodded, swallowing a bit of bile that had crept up his throat. "Yeah, but it's a bit crazy."

"We can take crazy," Maddie answered. "What is it?"

"Well," Tucker pulled at his collar. "While you two were downstairs fighting the ghosts, which was totally awesome by the way, I was trying to put what happened to Danny into a math equation."

He stopped there, gauging looks of interest.

Maddie gestured for him to continue. "Go on."

"I thought that since souls seem to naturally suck in ectoplasm, maybe we can introduce a counter-force on those same principles to...suck the ectoplasm back out?" Tucker offered nervously.

Jack and Maddie looked at each other. "And how do you propose we do that?"

"Well, by my calculations, which I did over a five minute period, I'm aware, we could create a device that draws out a small part of the...users soul," Tucker put on a nervous grin. "Amplify the drawing power of the part to where it can suck the moon in and that would be enough to take the ectoplasm away from the ghost, rendering it mostly harmless if it's not sucked into the containment unit with the ectoplasm."

"Uh-huh," Maddie tilted her head forward, a frown only made worse by the deep bags under her eyes. "What happens to the part of the soul we use to give the initial suction?"

"I think we could find a way to filter the ectoplasm out of it when the ghost is caught," Tucker said. He handed the phone to Jack. "Here's the equations I figured out. Maybe they can help."

Jack stared at the phones screen for what seemed to be ages. Then he started tapping at it, making corrections, adding variables and operators. Then he was still for several seconds. He showed the screen to Maddie. Then they both started nodding.

"Tucker," Maddie started, wiping away a tear with what seemed to be her first genuine smile in days. "You're a genius."

* * *

><p>Danny grabbed one by it's tentacles and spun around in place. After three rotations, he threw it into the kitchen. He almost went after it when the other ghost wrapped tentacles around his ankles and pulled him to the ground. Almost without noticing it, he felt himself sink through the floor as he fell, only to be repelled by some wall of pure fire on the other side of the floor.<p>

He screamed as he was brought back up again, then slammed on the floor, which Danny stayed solid for. The ghost brought him up again, only for Danny's legs to dissolve. He flipped in mid air and slammed his fist into the ghosts jaw in a brutal uppercut. _Let go of me, you monster-ghost-thing!_

Tentacles wrapped around Danny's throat. He couldn't breathe. They wrapped tighter and tighter. Danny could feel his windpipe starting to cave and he couldn't make any sound. Then, purely by reflex, he started to sink through the floor. He rocked back and slammed the ghost right into the barrier of fiery death that was the lab's ceiling. He took a sharp intake of breath as the tentacles released him.

The ghost Danny had thrown into the kitchen phased through the wall and rushed at him. With a gasp of panic, Danny flew around and into the kitchen. It was a basic kitchen, if a little large for an apartment building, with counter tops, a fridge and an island in the center. It was also a complete mess, with destroyed dishes littering the floor, the kitchen table having been ravaged by a knife being dragged through it and leaving multiple gashes. The knife in question was embedded at the head of the table.

Silverware and kitchen knives were strewn about on the counter tops in a disorganized chaos, shining in the dimming sunlight as the sun set in the distance.

Danny flew inside and grabbed a knife. _This was a bad idea. I mean a really, really bad idea. Wait, what am I doing? A knife won't do anythi-_

A tentacles appeared out of nowhere and seized Danny by the ankles and wrists. Danny screamed as the ghost flew upward and through the ceiling. However, Danny stayed solid impacted the ceiling. The ghost dragged him along by his limbs until he was right above the kitchens island and let go, causing Danny to fall to the kitchen island and roll over onto the floor.

The impact caused several sharp knives to fall from counter straight down into Danny's back, followed by the knife that Danny had picked up earlier. Danny floated up, the knives having passed through them harmlessly. _Well, I landed there for a second. I'd celebrate but there's a pair of ghosts out to kill me!_

Like they had been summoned, both ghosts had appeared. Wicked smiles on their faces, their eye sockets glowing read. Danny surged forward and slammed into one of them. The other grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him back. His legs dissolved into mist and he flew away from the one that grabbed him. He circled around and threw both fists into the things stomach. _Just keep swinging, just keep swinging, justkeepswinging..._

Two tentacles tangled together like a large, knotted rope whipped themselves over Danny's side, launching him off the ghost he was trying to beat within an inch of it's un-life. Both ghosts sprung up and launched toward Danny. One wrapped several tentacles around his neck and cut off his air supply. The other grabbed his arms and legs and held them out taught. Despite his struggles, he could not get free.

The one with it's tentacles around his neck laughed maliciously, and brought another pair of tentacles down on his stomach. Danny's form flinched at the blow, then the next one. Then the third one. Then Danny's form dissolved in place. Now free, Danny kicked the one holding his limbs with both feet to the face, and punched the one that previously held him in a stranglehold in the face.

Danny was panting heavily as both ghosts returned from their recoil. _Just keep swinging, just keep swinging..._

* * *

><p>Jack was bent over the work bench, soldering iron in hand as he fused circuits to a mother board inside an aluminum, circular casing. Occasionally, he would look down at Tucker's phone, on hand for reference as he tweaked the inside and set it up for programming.<p>

Everyone else was scraping some paint off of the wall, paint scrapers in hand. They were trying to get some anti-ghost solution and since Maddie couldn't make anymore, they had to recycle some.

"Alright, at think that's enough for distillation," Maddie said, gathering paint chips into a bucket.

"Whew, finally!" Tucker said, collapsing to the ground and holding his wrist.

Sam sat down next to him. "Let's just hope it works."

The sound crashing upstairs did nothing to help anyone's mood.

"I hope Danny's okay," Sam said quietly, looking up.

Maddie took to paint shavings and put them in a beaker, and started the process of distilling the anti-ghost solution from the rest of the paint and bits of dirt. Normally, if Maddie wanted some more ghost solution, she'd cut some blood blossom flowers herself, but those were all in the garage under a sun lamp. This was also where the van was.

No one wanted to go near the garage again.

"Hey, someone go through my chest full of spare parts and see if they can't find something to mount this in!" Jack shouted from his work bench.

Tucker moaned in complaint. Sam roughly pulled him to his feet and they both marched over to the chest. Inside was a mountain of metal parts, some rusted, some shining and new. They both started to dig through the chest. Tucker tossed away random gears and spools of copper wire as he came to them. Sam carefully went through metal tube after metal tube. _Too small, too small, too small_...

They found a rusted, broken down paintball gun. Tucker picked it up. "Mr. F, I think we found what you're looking for!"

Jack looked away from his work. When he saw the gun, he smiled. "Perfect!"

He bounded forward and eagerly took the gun in his hands, only for it to completely fall apart on him when he did. The three stared at the pile of broken parts with various levels of confusion and discouragement.

"We'll find something else," Sam said, crouching over the chest again and sifting through the parts.

A loud shattering noise from upstairs caused everyone in the lab to flinch. They all heard Danny scream in pain.

"Quickly! We don't have much time," Maddie shouted.

"We're on it!" Tucker affirmed, joining Sam at the chest.

Eventually, after sifting through every part, Sam had something in her hand. It was an old, metal thermos. It was dented in several places and the paint was chipped around the top. The lid was hanging from a cloth strap fastened to the top. The lid itself was meant to simply clip onto the top rather than screw on.

Sam held up the thermos. "Will this work?"

Jack looked over to Sam. A frown formed on his face as he came over to the two. "A thermos?"

"It's big enough and it's meant to hold things," Sam explained quickly. "We can line the inside with anti-ghost solution and you can cut out anything to need to fit whatever inside."

A thump sounded from upstairs.

"It'll have to do!" Jack said, snatching it from Sam's hand. He quickly went to work, measuring the inside and out and began to cut out the bottom and a small port on the side. Then he quickly grabbed the web of miniature ecto-projectors he had fashioned earlier and welded the wiring together and fastened it quickly. A quick push on the top and and web collapsed into a compact version, easily able to slide into whatever compartment was needed.

"Distillation complete!" Maddie shouted, snatching a bubbling beaker full of pink fluid and bringing it over to the work table.

"Great work honey," Jack said with a smile. "We're using this thermos as the casing."

"Got it," Maddie said, grabbing a small paint brush and dipping it in the solution. She began painting the inside of the thermos. When she was done, Jack handed her the bottom he had cut out. When she painted the inside of that, they slid it into a small oven on the side to help the paint dry faster.

A series of thumps and loud noises from upstairs coming from whatever Danny was doing. Jack and Maddie looked up at the Observation Decks shattered window with fear before turning back to the oven.

"Come on, come on..." Maddie coached the paint to dry faster.

A few seconds later and Maddie yanked the oven open. She pulled the pieces out, her jumpsuit shielding her from the heat. "That's good enough! Jack, work your magic."

Jack did exactly that, welding the motherboard and projectors to the cut out bottom then inserting them straight in. He welded the bottom back in place and fastened the on button and slider in the side. A few additional spot welds and he was finished. Jack took a sharp intake of breath and activated the thermos.

"Whoa!" Jack said as he felt something inside himself be pulled into the thermos. A bright blue light glowed from the inside and shined out for all to see. With his thumb firmly pressed on the slider, he pushed it forward, causing the light to spread out in a cone in front of him. He slid it back and the light came back. He let his thumb off of the on button/slider. "Whew!"

Maddie was giggling with joy. "Jack, I think we have a chance!"

"I think you're right Madds," Jack said with a large, weary grin.

The a crash and thump came from upstairs and Jack's face turned from a large grin to a look of determination. He bounded forward, towards the stairs and ran up them three at a time. "Hold on, Danny! Daddy's coming!"

"Wait for me!" Maddie shouted as she dashed after her husband.

* * *

><p><em>Author's Note: Whew! I am SO happy with how this chapter turned out. I'm happy I finished it on deadline as well, which I hope I'll continue to be able to do. However, school semester is starting tomorrow so I may not be able to crank these chapters out in anything resembling a reasonable schedule and I hope you will all be patient with me as I try to figure this out. No, I'm not abandoning this fic, I far to happy with it right now to think about that.<em>

_I have, however, noticed something. I have a slight block when it comes to writing action scenes. I'm studying up online to see how to handle this but action scenes are really difficult for me. For some reason. I hope that doesn't show in the fight scenes themselves, but if it does, I hope to be able to learn from this and make the next chapter better than the last._

_Anyway, Danny's Origin should be wrapped up next chapter. This will set up some of the dynamics between the Fenton family, Sam and Tucker and Danny himself for the rest of the fic and I'm eagerly awaiting being able to write it. After that, I plan on writing the Lunch Lady and then Skulker's arc, which I hope you will enjoy as much as you've enjoyed this one. Thank you all for your wonderful feedback regarding this fic and I am super happy that you are happy reading this._

_I hope to hear from all of you soon. You, my wonderful readers, are awesome and I would not be doing this without you._

_~Fulcon_


	5. Origin: Part 5

_The following is a non-profit, fan based work of literary fiction. Danny Phantom is the property of Viacom, Nickelodeon and Butch Hartman. Please support the official release._

* * *

><p>Jack exited the stair case, his head on a swivel. "Danny, where are you?"<p>

"In the bathroom!" Was their sons echoing reply.

He turned right and ran down the hall, Maddie right behind him. They threw open the door and came to a distressing sight. The ghosts were there and they were tangled in a ball around Danny, trying to crush him like a pair of boa constrictors. The ball was floating over the sink. Danny's head was poking out the bottom, straining against the ghosts but not from lack of air.

Jack pointed the thermos at the squirming ball and turned it on with maximum output. The blue beam shot out of the barrel. Jack shivered ever so slightly as the beam engulfed the three floating specters. Immediately, each of them started to flash white. Tendrils of green ectoplasm started to flow toward the glowing barrel and the ghosts were screaming.

Until one of them shot a tentacle out of the beam and knocked the thermos out of Jack's hands. The thermos shut off and bounced off of the wall, hitting the floor with a clang. Maddie dove for it, landing on her stomach with a grunt.

One of the ghosts unwrapped itself from around Danny, leaving the other to tighten it's grip on his neck and limbs. The newly free ghost wrapped a tentacle around Jack's neck and lifted the giant of a man up. He gurgled for breath, flailing at the tentacle uselessly as his hands phased through the ghostly appendage.

Maddie practically shoved the thermos at the ghost as the end began to glow blue. She gasped as the beam erupted from it. The ghost's form distorted, howling in rage and fright. The thermos was shaking violently as the ghost was slowly being sucked inside. It released Jack a flew in the opposite direction with as much power as it could.

Danny fell to the floor in a pile of confused limbs and was struggling to right himself. Maddie took a rolled-up tentacle to the face and then the thermos was knocked to the ground this time. Glowing green tentacles wrapped around the device and started to squeeze.

"No!" Maddie shouted.

Then the ghost was tackled by a black and white blur. They impacted the wall and Danny was wrestling with the ghost, trying to force the thermos out of it's grasp. He succeeded, only to have a tentacle hammer down onto his head. The thermos leaped out of Danny's grasp, only to be caught like a football by Jack.

Danny planted a fist the ghost's face, grabbed it by the tentacles and flung it out of the bathroom. He flew after it in hot pursuit, and the other ghost made to follow him, only for Jack to turn the thermos on it. It's form began to warp like it was caught in a tractor beam. It started to flash white, creating a ring effect at the flashes were sucked into the thermos little bit by little bit.

Tried as it might, the ghost could not escape the glowing, blue vortex which it had found itself trapped it. It's cries sounded frightened now in contrast to it's menacing roars. The other ghost, from the ruined remains of the living room, tried to fly to it's other half's aid, only to be stopped when Danny seized it's tentacles and pulled it back with a harsh grunt of effort.

Jack was gritting his teeth in effort. The ghost was being pulled mightily. It's tentacles tried again and again to escape the glowing blue pull, to wrap around Jack's arms and wrest the offending thermos from his hands to no avail.

With a final screech of terror, the ghost was sucked inside the thermos and Jack snapped it's cap into place. He collapsed to his knees, panting hard and sweating profusely. Maddie was at his side in an instant. "Jack, are you alright?"

"Yeah, just need...to...I'm okay," Jack tried to stand up, only fall forward, barely catching himself with his hands.

Maddie took hold of the thermos. "I'll take the next one. You rest."

Jack's reply was lost in the scream that gave everyone else chills. The ghost looked thoroughly enraged, it's empty eye sockets now glowing with dark red lights and it's foul maw opened to a perfect circle of teeth.

A tentacle shot out behind the ghost and wrapped itself around Danny's throat. With a rapid spin in place, Danny was shot up the stairs, taking a bit off the top step as he went up, collided with the ceiling above before finally falling to the floor in a heap. Danny rubbed his head. "Ow..."

Down below, Maddie dodged the charging ghost, rolling on the floor over broken furniture pieces and just barely avoiding the charging maw, that pulled out of its killer dive flying up in a semi circle. Danny came barreling down upon it and missed while collided with the wall in a foggy splat of black and white.

The ghost glared maddeningly at Maddie, sat up and activated the thermos. A tentacle wrapped around her wrist just before she did, and wrenched it so the thermos faced away from it's intended target. Then it turned further, twisting Maddie onto her back as she yelled out in pain and shock.

Danny had recovered, and slammed into the ghost as hard as he could. Maddie was forced along the same route as the ghost was sent reeling before being released. Her arm was entirely limp and Maddie was grunting in pain as she held the thermos in the other hand.

The ghost was struggling against the ghostly teen, who was slamming his fist onto anything he could reach. An uppercut sent the ghost further upstairs and Danny followed on foot, panting heavily.

Jack sat up and came over to Maddie. "Are you alright?"

"I think the ghost dislocated my shoulder," Maddie hissed through clenched teeth. "Pop back in for me?"

"Sure," Jack said, gingerly grasping the shoulder. "This will only hurt a second."

"Just hurry up," Maddie said.

"By the way, dear?" Jack asked.

"_What?_"

"The ghost is coming back."

Maddie gasped in shock as she looked up the stair-case, only to find they were both upstairs. A sickening crack rippled from Maddie's shoulder. She gasped and held it. "...thanks dear."

"You're welcome," Jack smiled as he sat down. "I'm still a little woozy so."

"Way ahead of you," She kissed his head, took the thermos and bolted upstairs.

The upstairs was as much a wreck as everything else. Each of the doors had been ripped off it's hinges. Inside Jazz's room, the drawers and cabinets had been thrown aside, papers of all kinds strewn all over the floor. Her bedsheets had been torn up, but her bed was untouched, otherwise.

Danny's was similar, only the bed was torn up from the springs.

In the shattered doorway to Jack and Maddie's room, Danny landed on his back. The ghost was on top of him, desperately trying to choke the life out of the boy.

"Danny!" Maddie shouted, aiming the thermos at the ghost.

Danny's head whipped around, saw his mother and heard the thrum as the thermos came alive. The ghost did as well, and immediately released Danny to charge at Maddie.

With an almost involuntary twitch of her fingers, the cap came off and the thermos's beam shot out and engulfed the specter. Too late, it realized it's mistake and tried to turn around, tentacles flailing in an attempt to give it more push against the glowing blue vacuum it was trapped it. It's wail shook the walls.

Danny watched with morbid fascination as the ghost was sucked inside the thermos, it's form distorting until it had vanished completely and his Mom capped the thermos. Maddie fell to her knees and was sweating profusely. Both of them were panting heavily but were otherwise silent.

"So," Danny tentatively broke the silence. "Does that mean we win?"

"Yes Danny," Maddie smiled wide, pulling goggles and hood back with a large grin. She started to laugh with relief. "We've won."

Danny layed on his back, starting to laugh as well. "We won!"

"We won?" Jack's voice came from down below.

"The ghosts have been captured," Maddie's voice broke slightly and tears started to fall from her eyes. "We did it!"

"Hey kids!" Jack presumably yelled down to the lab. "We won! We caught the ghosts!"

Three sets of footsteps thundered up the stairs as Danny and Maddie helped each other down the stairs. The first up from the lab was Jasmine, her head seeming to lock onto Danny almost immediately before hugging him in an almost tackle-like manner. "Oh, you're okay, thank goodness!"

"That was the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life," Tucker remarked as he came up the stairs.

"If it wasn't trying to kill us, that ghost would've been amazing!" That was Sam, with a nervous grin on her face.

Danny returned the hug and Jasmine's head was on Danny's shoulder, her whole body heaving with every broken sob. "I-I thought you were dead for sure."

"It's okay," Danny soothed, his voice vibrating with relief. "I'm alright. The ghosts are caught. We're all save."

Jazz looked up at him, her eyes rimmed red with tears streaming down her cheeks. "Are you hurt at all?"

"Just a few bruises," Danny said, smiling in a way he hoped was comforting. "Should be fine in a few days."

_I'm pretty sure the fact my spine didn't crumble was due the ghost in me, _Danny thought in retrospect. _Tucker's right. I kinda am like a super-hero. That's...actually pretty cool._

Maddie cleared her throat. "Danny...as much as we all would like to celebrate right now, we need to get that ghost out of you. Now."

"She's right," Jack agreed, standing up straight with a deep breath. "With the technology we have now, that Tucker helped invent, I know we can get that ghost out of you before it starts becoming a problem."

Tucker had a proud smile on his face.

"Shouldn't that be his choice?" Sam asked, folding her arms. "He totally just saved everyone's lives with that thing. It can't be that bad."

Maddie pursed her lips. Jack all but glared with a slight frown on his face.

"Sam...we're ghost experts. More importantly, we're his parents," Maddie stated coolly. "Were this anywhere else besides our home and anyone else besides our son, we'd be all for seeing what could be done with this kind of bond. However, this is our home and he is our son. It's too dangerous and our entire family has been in enough danger for the past two or three days."

"Thanks but no thanks," Jack finished.

"But-" Sam began, before an ice cold hand placed itself on her shoulder.

"I kind of want it gone too," Danny said, looking sheepish. "As cool as these powers are and as much fun as it was fighting terrifying squid people from an alternate dimension, I really don't want to do that again. It...yeah. I was scared out of my mind most of the time.

Sam looked at him. Looked him right in the eye, light violet on glowing green for a good hard moment. Then she sighed. "Alright. Not my decision to make."

She looked at the Fenton parents. "Sorry, I didn't mean that you should put Danny in danger or anything. I just think it's really cool, you know?"

"Like I said," Maddie said, smiling. "Anywhere else, _anyone_ else and we'd completely agree with you."

"Let's get to the lab and finally put this behind us," Jack said cheerfully.

As everyone went down the stairs, Jasmine was giving her parents a very, very dark look, with her mouth almost fighting against becoming a snarl.

Sam and Tucker arrived first, remaining the observation deck. Jack, Maddie and Danny continued walking through the door they forgot to close. Jasmine arrived, her angry expression now aimed at the floor.

The three descended into the lab. Jack rolled over a make-shift gurney and helped Danny sit on it. "It'll bit a little bit while I build the extraction rig. You think you can sit there while we get it done?"

"I don't think I'll be going through anymore walls for a while," Danny chuckled. "That fight took a lot out of me."

"I'll bet it did," Maddie said, holding her sons hand. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yeah I'm fine," Danny assured her. He was breathing deeply and holding his stomach. "Just can't wait until all of this is over."

"Me too," Maddie sighed, looking none-to-convinced that Danny was okay.

"Okay!" Jack said, holding a web of ecto-projectors in his hands "So Danny, we're going to use this to filter the ectoplasm out of your soul. It'll shoot a bit of your soul through the projectors and with the filters installed, when it comes back in, you'll be ectoplasm free."

"Couldn't you use the thermos?" Danny asked, raising an eyebrow.

"We could, but there's already two ghosts in there," Jack answered, nodding at the thermos in question. "Personally, I feel like that's pushing it."

"So what are you going to hold the ghost in?" The intercom came to life and Sam's voice rang through the lab.

"The portal already has containers to hold ectoplasm in," Jack said. "We were thinking of funneling the ghost through the projectors and into the portal proper."

It was quiet in the lab for several seconds.

"You fixed whatever was wrong with the portal, right?" Tucker asked hesitantly.

"Yes, yes we did," Jack gave a firm nod.

"After today, we're not turning that thing on again for a long time," Maddie explained. "Everything that could've gone wrong, went wrong and we really don't want to release more ghosts into the city anytime soon."

"Or ever," Danny said.

Jack went to work hooking the web up to the portal itself, via long plastic tubing inset into the ectoplasm projectors. The outside had been carefully coated with solution. Danny laid down on the gurney.

"We need to strap you in," Maddie said. "The last thing we need is the ghost taking you with it inside."

"You really think that'd happen?" Danny asked with a frown.

"I'm not sure," Maddie explained. "But your grandmother always said 'better safe than sorry'."

"Okay," Danny nodded and allowed himself to be strapped and belted onto the gurney.

The web was mounted over the gurney and placed on top of Danny's chest, the tube linking it to the ghost portal. A battery was swiftly wired in by Jack, who then pressed a remote into Danny's hand. It had a single, red button on it.

"Now Danny," Jack said. "If this hurts at all, press that button. It'll stop the extraction. I don't think it'll hurt, but you never know."

"Thanks Dad," Danny said.

Jack went off to help Maddie hook the thermos up in similar fashion. When that was finished, Jack and Maddie looked at each other. "We're ready."

"Here's my key, Jack," Maddie handed it to her husband. "I'll be down here with Danny."

"Gotcha," Jack replied. He looked at Danny. "This will all be over soon."

Danny nodded, starting to get nervous as his father ascended the stair-case. In the observation deck, Jazz was sitting in the back, glaring at the floor. Sam and Tucker were both watching him. Sam was wringing her hands and Tucker adjusted his glasses.

Jack lowered the safety glass, input both keys and the on button revealed itself. He switched on the intercom. "Are you both ready?"

From down below, Danny and Maddie gave their okay's.

Jack hesitantly pressed the button that turned the portal on.

Down below, the portal started to come alive. A swirling green mass appeared suddenly, turning with all the force of a wicked maelstrom. The extractor activated down below, the tube glowed green and Danny's black jumpsuit was quickly sucked into the machine, leaving just plain, old, regular Danny. In the portal, swirling inside were three figures. The two monsters that had occupied their house for the past few days, their screams inaudible as they disappeared in the whirling energy. Then Danny's ghost-clone appeared and disappeared in the same fashion.

After a few seconds, and the portal stabilized, Jack pressed the button again and the portal as quickly as it had appeared.

"We did it, Jack!" Maddie's voice came from down below. "Danny's back to normal."

Jack sighed in relief and started to laugh again. He rushed back through the lab doors and down the stairs.

"Come on!" Sam urged. Tucker and her followed after them, with Jazz walking slowly behind them.

Jack had pulled Danny into one of his big, bear hugs. "Dad...oxygen...can't breathe!"

"Sorry! Sorry," Jack said, putting his son down and wiping away a tear "I just wasn't sure I'd ever be able to do that again."

"Yeah," Danny said, heaving as he struggled to get oxygen where it needed to go. "Me too."

Maddie hugged him too, tears having returned in full force. "It's over, it's over, it's over..."

Danny got off the gurney and stood up. Tucker and Sam both gave him a big group hug. They let him go soon after.

"We're glad you're okay dude," Tucker said.

"Yeah, no kidding" Sam hastily nodded.

Everyone was smiling, relieved. The ghosts were gone, Danny was back to normal and everything was okay.

"When are we going to take care of the van?" Jasmine asked sullenly.

That brought everyone back down to earth.

"Right," Jack said. "I'll take care of that since Maddie got the last one."

"And...how long am I grounded for?" Danny asked, somewhat fearfully.

Jack and Maddie looked at each other.

Tucker and Sam went quiet.

"Well, you went into the lab and activated the portal which resulted in a home invasion by a pair of vicious killers and released four more into the city," Jack recounted. "However, you also saved everyone's life, didn't fight us as we researched your condition and I can't think of anything more traumatic than being possessed by a ghost, so...what do you think, Maddie?"

Maddie was quiet for a minute before speaking. "I think that Danny is never allowed in the lab again. At least not for a very, _very_ long time."

"I agree," Jack nodded.

"As for grounding, I think the results of his actions speak for themselves," Maddie replied. "I think, in this case, grounding is entirely unnecessary."

"Agreed again," Jack said, nodding and smiling.

"Really?" Danny looked nonplussed. "Not even a little?"

"Did you _want_ to get grounded?" Jack asked, similarly non-plussed.

"Well no," Danny responded. "I just...you know, disobeyed you and let four supernatural killers into the city! How does that not justify a little grounding?"

"Simple," Maddie answered. "If the ghosts that got out are half as destructive as the ones we just caught, their activities will be on the news soon, if not already. Every time they do something, wreck a building, kill someone? You'll know it was partially your fault. That's not a pleasant thought but it's the truth. I don't see how _adding_ to that makes it any better."

Danny was quiet.

"Well, if there's a bright side to this," Jack said, trying to steer the conversation back to happier waters. "Danny has proven that we are not crazy!"

"Oh no," Jasmine snarled from behind them. "He did _no such thing_."

"...excuse me, young lady?" Maddie asked, seeming offended.

Danny, Sam and Tucker all started to back away very slowly from the three Fentons.

"You heard me," Jasmine glared at the two. "I think you're both absolutely insane."

"Why?" Jack asked seeming uncertain.

"You built the portal!" Jasmine exploded at the top of her lungs. "The whole reason this fiasco happened was because you two _built that door to hell_!"

"This 'whole fiasco' started because Danny came down here when he wasn't supposed too!" Maddie retaliated. "When you were supposed to be watching him!"

"Don't blame me for this!" Jasmine shouted. "It's not my fault you never got the hint that you should've dropped this years ago!"

Danny buried his face in his hands. Jack's eyes had gone wide, bags underneath them seeming more prominent as he searched for a place to intervene.

"We were trying to be a safe as we could with this!" Maddie screamed. "We created safeties, put in locks and rules were set in place! Rules that we trusted you and Danny to keep! But you were to busy in your room writing a paper to make sure that Danny didn't go into the lab!"

"Hey!" Jazz furiously pointed at Danny, Sam and Tucker. "I read those three the riot act when they were talking about coming down here! Danny didn't even want to come down here for Pete's sake, so don't you _dare_ try to pin this on me!"

"Errr...Jazz? Uh-" Danny tried to intervene before he was cut off.

"Okay! Ladies!" Jack said, separating his wife and daughter with two outstretched hands. "Let's stop now before we say anything else we might regret. Maddie, it's been a long couple of days and we need to rent a couple motel rooms where we can all stay while everything is being fixed."

Jazz turned around, folding her arms and seething in anger. Maddie glared at her daughter and similarly crosser her arms.

"You know..." Danny interjected finally. "The reason I came down to try to get the portal working was because of you, Jasmine."

The lab was quiet. Jack's mouth had gone slightly agape. Maddie's eyes were now wide with concern. Sam and Tucker's faces slowly adopted similar expressions of shock.

"Wh-what?" Jazz barely spoke, turning ever so slowly to face her brother.

Danny rubbed the back of his head. He took a deep breath and continued. "You've never been...you know, quiet, about what you thought of our parents. How you thought they were idiots slaving their lives away on a hopeless fantasy and you always talk about how depressed they'll be when they 'finally realize' how stupid and hopeless they were."

Jazz was facing entirely towards Danny with wide eyes.

"I...didn't know what to think. On one hand, they were right, ghosts were a serious problem that no one was taking seriously. On the other hand, if you were right, then they were wasting their time on a pointless and harmless hobby," Danny continued. He smacked his lips in nervousness before continuing. "I had to know for myself. I had to know if Mom and Dad were crazy or if you were just in denial. I thought that, if I at least proved them right, maybe you wouldn't _hate_ them so much."

"Danny, I-I didn't-" Jazz's words came out almost as squeaks.

"So I came down here and ended up getting the thing working," Danny frowned. "Not that it mattered. In fact, it just made everything worse. So I wish I never came down here either, if that helps anything."

No one moved for a few moments. Jazz was trying to stifle tears. "I-I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean for-"

"I'm sorry too," Maddie said, looking sad as well. "I haven't been at my best for the past few days."

"I think," Jack said wrapping an arm around Jazz and Maddie each. "That we've all had a very rough couple of days and we need a good nights sleep away from here so we can approach all our problems with a head full of fudge. I mean reason. Hopefully there'll be fudge too."

Jazz giggled softly, wiping away a tear.

Sam and Tucker started to shift uneasily.

"Hey, Mr and Mrs F?" Tucker addressed the two adults. "We kind of came over here without dropping home first, so I think Sam and I better get going."

"Right!" Maddie replied. "Yes. That reminds me, we need to use the thermos on the van so we can give you rides," she said, walking over to the portal and detaching the thermos. "I'll just go do that really quick."

"Be careful," Jack and Danny said at the same time.

"I will," Maddie smiled, marching up the stairs.

Jazz's smile faded and she looked a hundred years older with the bags under her eyes dark and weighing heavily on her.

"Hey Mr. Fenton?" Sam asked. "Can I go upstairs and use the restroom while we're waiting?"

Jack finished watching his wife and daughter exit the lab. "Sure. You know where it is. In fact, why don't you all head up and use the can, I'll be down here getting ready to lock up before the reconstruction starts."

The trio gave their affirmatives and headed up the stairs. Sam went into the restroom. "It's okay, everything's intact here!"

Danny and Tucker laughed. "Good!" Danny replied.

A flush and a brief sound of running water later and Sam came out looking a little bit better than before. "Thanks. I was holding that in for a while."

Danny ducked inside while Sam took her phone out.

"Uh...Sam? What are you doing?"

"I'm-" The sound of screeching metal outside cut her off.

"I'm taking pictures of the damage," Sam continued.

"Why?" Tucker asked.

"I wanna see if my parents could fit the bill for some of the damages," Sam answered, taking several photos of the living room before pocketing her phone again. "Fenton's insurance premiums are going to go through the roof as it is and my parents have more money than they know what to do with, so..."

Jack and Jazz came up from the lab. From one of the pockets on his jumpsuit, Jack took the door which was half-buried in the opposite wall and set it against the door-frame. With a roll of yellow duct tape, marked with the word 'danger' in black letters, Jack quickly sealed off the lab with a pair of crossed strips.

"Danny-I-" Jazz began, starting to cry again.

"-think we should talk about it later," Danny replied with a weary smile. "When we're not running on adrenaline and sheer terror."

Jazz blinked and rubbed her eyes. "Yeah, I-yeah. I think you're right."

Maddie came in the front door, holding the thermos in one hand and a smile on her face. "Got it! Now let's get the two of you home."

Danny spoke up. "Can I see 'em both home?"

"Sure," Maddie replied. "But after that, you're on bed rest for the next couple of days."

"Yes ma'am," Danny replied with a wide grin.

The group, sans Jazz and Jack, who were busy trying to salvage their things and calling a motel, respectively, piled outside.

Danny, Sam and Tucker paused when they saw the Van. It had plowed, back first, into the fence behind it. Sam quickly took a picture of it and Danny looked at her oddly.

Ahead of them, Maddie opened the driver-side door and noticed the kids had stopped. "Kids, it's safe. I promise."

Danny shrugged and followed, getting in the back and taking the middle seat. Tucker, after some hesitation, shrugged as well and followed. Sam was trying to shake the nervous feeling she got when she stared at the van.

"Sam?" Danny called from the window. "Are you okay?"

Sam shook herself from her reverie. "Yeah, I'm fine."

She took the seat next to Danny. Sam and Tucker jumped slightly when Maddie started the van and they pulled out of the alleyway and onto the road. The setting sun shined in the windows, casting it's amber glow over the occupants of the van.

Tucker checked the time on his phone. "Oh, man...my parents are gonna kill me."

"How come?" Danny asked, looking at the phone. He saw the time. "Oh.

"Do you need me to come in and say something, Tucker?" Maddie asked from the front. "Sam?"

"No, it's fine," Tucker said. "I'll just let 'em think Danny and I agreed to study at his place and I forgot to tell them. It'll be fine."

"Are you sure?" Maddie asked with concern.

"I'm sure," Tucker affirmed. "Though if they are really mad, I'll give you a call."

"Please do," Maddie responded as they pulled up to his house. "You're the reason we can catch the ghosts now. I'd hate to see you grounded over it."

Tucker clambered over Danny and Sam's legs to exit the vehicle. "Thanks for the ride, Mrs. F!"

"You're welcome," Maddie smiled. "Seriously though, if you need Jack or I to say something, don't hesitate to give us a call."

"I won't!" Tucker waved goodbye and entered his house.

A few houses down, and they were at Sam's place. "Sam, do you need me to come in and explain why you're so late or anything?"

"No I'll be fine," Sam said, getting up and almost jumping out of the van. "Thanks Mrs. Fenton!"

After Sam had disappeared into her parents mansion, Maddie pulled away. "Geeze, this van did a number on the brakes. We'll have to get them replaced soon."

"Sorry," Danny frowned.

Maddie jumped. "Oh no, dear! Don't worry about it. You had no way of knowing. I'm sorry for bringing it up."

"I'm still sorry."

Maddie was quiet as they pulled out of the street. "...Danny, Fenton's don't mope. We'll fix this and soon there won't be any ghosts in the city ever again."

"Right," Danny said. "I'm just worried about what'll happen in the mean-time."

"We'll fix it," Maddie repeated with a steely determination in her voice. "Whatever that takes."

Danny watched the sun go down. His eyes started to droop. He felt exhausted and blinked a couple of times to stay awake. Only he fell into the blissful state of sleep as the sun disappeared over the horizon.

Maddie looked in the back as she pulled up to the Fenton home. Jack was holding several carry-on bags in his hands and Jazz was holding a few text books and several notebooks in her arms. Jack carefully opened the side door and packed the bags he was carrying inside. He made a shushing motion to Jazz when he saw that Danny was asleep.

Jazz climbed in with some trepidation and quietly buckled herself in.

Jack sat in the passenger side. He asked quietly, "How was the drive?"

"It was good," Maddie answered. "The brakes are toast, but we expected that."

"Well at least, in the end, no one was really hurt," Jack smiled. "I got the directions to the motel here."

Jack handed her his phone and Maddie looked at the directions. The motel wasn't far, just a ten minute drive, for which Maddie was thankful.

Maddie drove away from the house. She looked at Danny, sleeping peacefully in the back, one last time and smiled. It was all over and they deserved a good-nights rest.

* * *

><p><em>Author's Notes: I am so freaking giddy right now.<em>

_This chapter, right here, marks the first time that I have ever, EVER finished an arc. Ever. This feeling of accomplishment is washing over me that is just pure ecstasy. I am SO FREAKING HIGH RIGHT NOW! I want to thank each and every single one of you for your kind-hearted reviews and for sticking with me so far._

_Now, before I go any further, this is not the end of the fic itself. Heavens no, I still have Lunch Lady, Box Ghost, Skulker, Vlad, those crossover plots that are begging to happen and I need to get them done! But the Origin Arc is done, and for that I am happy._

_Also, Danny's ghost powers are not gone forever. I would think that's a serious spoiler, except that this is the premise of the show, so they can't stay gone. That'd be violating the rules in such a way that I'm unwilling to do. However, the next arc stills needs to be planned out entirely and that means updates won't come for a while. I hope what I have already posted shall please your palette until then._

_Until the next time,_

_~Fulcon_


End file.
